


Pigs in a Blanket

by Kasan_Soulblade



Series: My DBD stories [1]
Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game), Saw (Movies)
Genre: Au dbd, Au from Jigsaw main franchise, Gen, Gore, Jigsaw as a survivror, Jigsaw is getting Amanda back and the Entity is going to die while he's at it, Jigsaw wouldlike the Entity to join him for a little GAME, John refuses to play the Entity's games, Kruegar is a pedophile, Kruegar is his darkest, Non-con though not detailed it's discussed and alluded, Psychological Manipulation, Tap didn't get drawn John did, Torture Mentioned, chapters discussing this are marked in thier chapter summery, evil amongst the good, grey morality, imortality, non-con, of a rather aweful slant, other tags to be added as needed, powerless villian, the survivors think Johns insane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25626046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: There were silly stories, about pigs. Tamest, the most common on his mind, was a tale without the cycle of predator and prey to mar it. A tale about a pig in a race, it's placement and symbology earned in the end had marked a calendar and held a subliminal sway to those familiar with the pseudo sciences that followed.His son was to have been born under that symbol... When he hadn't, well he'd grabbed that familiar symbols and twisted it, but underneath there was a glimmer of the old tale.  A promise of place if said Game was met head on.Amanda had been his pride and joy, one of the first to pass, quickest to adjust to his morals, and thus ascend to her place.Than one error, a doppelganger, and the Jigsaw found himself quite puzzled indeed.He'd been bed bound, dead and dying in stages.He'd woken hearty and whole.She didn't remember him but wielded his traps and tricks... if not well... at least passably.Then he found the doppelganger, the ruse, and John Kramer resolved he'd find the Entity and in due time set it into a little Game. It was the least he could do.But after being slotted into the role of Survivor... what could he honestly do?
Series: My DBD stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1891381
Comments: 35
Kudos: 35





	1. Intro: The advantages of ever near dying

She hadn’t been summoned alone. When the arms reached with their spines, twisting into a facsimile of the familiar (his frame, the sight incensed him beyond reason, to near madness, but the spines digging in had stilled him), thus he watched, helpless, as abomination guided her further from his morals.

Such was the introduction to this microcosm which was a macrocosm to a mad thing’s hungry whim. It fed, not on the meat it so cried for from its chosen, rather the processes that lead living to turn to meat. Residual emotional energies of the darkest slant.

San’s murder and suffering it was akin to taking subsidence of the friction before it transcended to a spark.

And that analogy… set the wheels to turning, and served as company around the firelight, when others survivors fixated on their physical suffering and how to avoid more of the same…

Well he’d been dying a long while now, and while his death had been abstained in this odd coagulation of limbo, hell, and pseudo purgatory, his vantage point of being on the cusp of death for so long it had it’s… advantages… in this moment, and all others.

These others… these survivors would cotton on, or not, and ever be trapped in cycle of death and consumption as punishment if they did not.

It was a rather… unconventional game, very long, and per present company… plodding. Still, it’d pass time. So, before the fire, contemplating sparks, fifth death in he’d been saved, and thus met his peers, the self-proclaimed survivors, he curled close to the fire. His slender frame, obvious age, and pallor, kept them quiet, respectful in their fear all unrealized, hidden in a skein of hypocrisy and seeming kindness. He took their offerings, food purloined off the back of their captor though they never knew it, taking scent as taste these others never realized the lot was purification twisted into alluring forms that mirrored expectations. He tolerated the meal, resolving to forgo the generators next hunt if the environs had an eco-system worth exploring, as parasitism on this scale was something that needed to be explored, and perhaps another spinning of the gear would guild him to a keystone that’d bring the lot tumbling down.

Until then, until that trial though, he ate, then set the offered meal aside, half eaten and some of them worried, to those he considered the compassion perhaps more genuine and some of his customary bitterness towards those eased, a bit.

Towards their self declared leader, Dwight, he canted his gaze up, met the man’s eyes though those broken glasses should have skewed perspective and caused the man to squint or look askew.

Another oddity to explore between “trials” perhaps, during the less turbulent span of “getting to know everyone” was a thing of the past rather than this awkward present.

“My name,” He breathed, marveling a bit how there was no bite, to breathing or speaking, no oxygen mask required, to that he smiled and let them think it friendliness. “Is John Kramer, and the pleasure, ” he nodded letting regard sweep over all of these players in this new game though they didn’t know it quite yet. “Is all mine.” 


	2. AMANDA: an introduction

He’d tried to reach her, his fallen child. Though steel had stilled his tongue and edges blurred his features in a rush of blood, he’d reached out. First a mute reprimand, brushing calloused fingers over the contours of her hidden blade. He’d made the prototype, had checked the straps, set the blade in it’s place before she’d gone out to gather the carrion that was the center piece of his Game. Save the carrion was not aware that it was such, still he’d edified it but before.. First time he’d done so under duress of old superstition, the idle hope for her to have better luck than him. Later times he’d done so to subtly check for fresh wounds of the self-inflicted slant. Because Amanda had truly vile stress management skills, part per her imprisonment, part per her upbringing, he’d tried distraction and dissuasion, but from time to time she’d fallen.

And there, between second and third bind, a new cut. So raw it was hot, even though the covering of robe sleeve, there was soft and heat that was smoothed by poorly applied compression had exacerbated. He’d of scolded, a gentle click of the tongue, pulling up the sleeve to better see….

But here and now she pulled away, a shake and hiss of steel being drawn was all the warning he got. Her arm drew back and she punched, blade leading. A quick jab from thigh to knee, to keep him from running. The limb buckled under the stroke, still it was a gentle fall, he’d been kneeling after all, old habits earned from his occasional stint at the animal shelter. He’d mastered a gentled approach with the skittish and wounded, and she’d exploited it, first to knock him down and attach his own trap to his mouth, then to better wound him when he tried to evoke their old bond via familiarity.

Then she was off, steel tipped boots clicking with each step, sloshing in the deeper patches of blood and rot as some sow or other from the plant left a more… organic span over the floors. She ran off to tend to some need, some obsession, her new keeper had bid her to do.

Even that was familiar, her enthusiasm, her frantic coming and going when cause had gripped her. It was something of a tragedy, something of a grief, to see her do so to another beck and call.

Only the supernatural slant and the obvious power this… thing… had flaunted before their separation and this reunion all hostile, kept his feelings from flitting to betrayal. That and his knowledge of her true culpability. She was again swept up in forces beyond her control, this time they were such that they were beyond _any_ mortal’s control, and this time, curiously, she was utterly without guilt for her actions while simultaneously guiltless in turn after being fed such artless assurances from his doppelganger. 

The contradiction and situation was at best, a bittersweet one, and the only relief in that moment was that it was not him wearing the pigs mask, bastardizing his own work by delusion’s hand.

The voice beyond the sky had laughed, mocked him his resolves to “save her”, then set him on a path that was neither quick nor painless but it’d been apathy and his determination to meet his goal had born bloody fruit. He’d eschewed subliminal prompts, the impulses of fixing generators, the dread in his heart of refusing (the pains in said heart) in stepping in line with this game, denying such had cost him in pain and deaths. First by chainsaw, then a thing akin to a ghost with an axe kin blade, then by some means he hadn’t seen, but felt. An axe thrown had caved his skull, which death had left him dizzy for two trails after.

Then… perhaps seeing the futility in its tired and true methods had tried more… subtle cues. The startled cries from the others here, those few others who’d seen his single minded hunt to find his disciple and bring her back and not understood. The bravest of them had broken silence to holler at him. One even creeping to him, recovering from the tremors of a death by electrocution, hunkered behind a stone, she’d taken his stillness as tractability, and it’d been a curious thing to see similar soothing motions directed at him. She’d entreated him to stop, to come with her; she’d show him the way. He’d smiled, loosed her grip, and let her go with a gentle brush of fingers about her jaw, a reminder to be silent least hunting things do as they must, then he’d straightened, sure of his ability to stand, and eschewed silence and hiding to call Amanda’s name, intent that _this was the trail_.

It hadn’t been.

There’d been several more deaths; the creature running this mad house had liked to pit him against the squealing, chain saw wielding madman. A not-so-subtle mockery that’d made John see crimson, and it’d been rage that’d defeated him the first few trials until he’d taken time to gauge his foes intelligence and limits.

Behind his ear some mechanism clicked. One hands clamped to staunch blood flow from his wound the other rose, feeling familiar edges and contours. While he hadn’t built a fail safe to spring the traps per-say he’d added little touches, particularly under the time piece, and even incapacitated by his wound, unable to walk or talk he knew his work very well… and Amanda, though devout in the ideology was not mechanically adept enough to deviate far from his blueprints. Bits and bobs were up his sleeve, his knife taken though the straps curiously attached and taunt, but the papers he’d kept rolled and taped, blue prints and the like those lingered and were still bound despite the rough and tumble nature of survival here. More importantly the mechanical pencil she’d gotten him, a pink thing with a bit of a curl about the end. He’d tolerated such mockery from her because… well she tried her best and was a good girl in her ways and it’s made him laugh a bit back then. Pulling back his sleeve, a twist got the pen to fall free and it took a moment to gather it and a few clicks to release a thin thread of lead. It was enough, he was able to feel about the insides of the clock via a little slit he’d set up for the electronics cooling and ventilation. Another beep, a hiss, and with a chirrup the timer first maxed out at 999, then the lot went dead.

Alone, for Amanda hadn’t lingered, she was a bit scattered in her enthusiasm, John straightened with a bit of clanking. He rather wished Amanda had picked up some more of his aptitude with the mechanical matters of traps to avoid such, still stealth, this time, wasn’t the point of this Game.

Gathering information was.

So he stood, and staggered about, a satire of Frankenstin’s monster about the edges. Fighting with standing, and walking, tying the torn bits of his pants into a sort of torque that shouldn’t have worked and allowed him to walk but had anyway. And though blood muddied his vision, and thus his efforts, he searched. After hiding the tools of his trade, of course. He looked not for Amanda, the time was not right for them to speak again as his bloody face attachment attested, but rather for a means to while the time a bit before their next meeting. He thought it’d be rather educational to see how the Game she’d constructed worked, to see where his teachings and this abomination’s patterns meshed. It’d be a glimpse into one familiar mind, and one unfamiliar, and perhaps a viewing of the micro and macrocosm of this place where dying was a requisite, yet death took a holiday, would divulge enough information for him to formulate some sort of plan.

If not, then it would not. After all, in taking him as he was dying and thrusting him against monsters set towards his death, yet never making the lot permanent this place's… monster… had granted him a sort of immortality. 

To it’s inevitable sorrow.

John would make sure of it, rest assured.


	3. keeping tally to 107

He’d sculpted his tale as he slinked from tall grass patch to tall grass patch. Above, behind, a metal hook hung, a brittle wind (so foul it might be some beast’s breath, the stars above could be distant eyes catching a light just right… there was an innate wrongness to both “natural” phenomenon it nearly transcended language) swinging soundlessly.

The sheer amount of rust about its hinge, in this gentle stirring that grass tolerated without moving yet steel fell to it, to soundlessly clatter, straining in place. He’d started a tally of little flaws in this reality to amuse himself. His game had lost its luster fiftieth entry in. This “wind” and it’s slapdash effects on the environ was entry number one hundred and one and one hundred and two, respectively. Again he was pitted against the man who’d stolen and skinned his fellow man and slapped those purloined features over his own. So he hid, from this insult quite deliberate and pulled up plants, a grain of some sort akin to wheat he thought. Clever fingers calloused with dealing in metals took to twining stems against hair until he had a passable scruff of off gold and brown, between that and the scraping of mud the silver of his hair was obscured, pulling up the hem of his robes, Amanda’s last gifting to him last Christmas, did the rest. That and he’d deliberately fouled the red garb, raking it in mud and muck and though it itched horridly he was obscured for the more… wild environs. Considering the environs he’d seen were limited to a meat plant, a school, this damned ten times visited corn field with its farm attachment, and a wrecked auto yard more taken by grass than cars…. Well the wild look suited more, and he made his attire match with an idle promise to himself that he’d better peruse the school next time, with luck there’d be some facsimile of a gymnasium and he could use the facilities to bathe while these others he’d encountered fell in step to the spider-above’s mechanisms and their generator specked path to damnation.

As for steps, footsteps were a quagmire here. He’d been unable to obscure his tracks, nothing to sweep behind him that didn’t leave enough of a tell to hide away, so he eschewed hard ground and paths. The fields and their muck were his roads, and he leapt over the thinnest spans of stone path, skirting generators in their cement rises, hooks with their tree-esk poles were to be avoided at all costs, and as such he avoided the hunter and hunted quite nicely during his stroll. After finding the gate he’d twiddled about edges and even triggered the spines that barred him from slipping out, running some premiere tests on their durability with planks and rocks taken from the immediate environs. Then gathering the broken bits and pocketing them, he’d gone out first to find sturdier fare, perhaps break into the killer’s home and try some of the tools against the bars.

It was the shed besides the abode that had caught his attention. Half in shadow, as derelict as the home it was near attached too, with a tantalizing slant that begged it be nudged just right to come down. He’d of passed it up had he not heard a peculiar muffled nose from within that planted his feet to the ground and left him straining his ears. Wondering if this was error number one hundred and five or not, but when it kicked up again, that noise, he decided that a little risk was worth it. Skipping stealth, setting a path of mud over stone, he slipped from cover familiar and slid up to the shed. It’s padlock was horridly dated, the numbers worn upon the disk they were meant to spin on, and a nudge proved the lot to be near rusted in place, in a way that though it found against the push of his fingers with a horrid friction it did so silently.

Clearly the architect of this.. reality.. had _no_ idea how rust worked in the slightest, the smell of blood thickened as he worked, and more in irritation of the _wrongness_ than any intimidation tactics success he stopped turning the mechanism. There were bloody hand prints on the step ups hand rail, the streak spoke of some hands scraping down, and the lack of prints from that last step to his present location assured the descender did not come this way often, had likely not from Trail’s start at least, if the undisturbed grass and grains meant anything.

Rolling up his shirt, it was of course when his visibility was lowest, the Murder screamed. Taking flight with a collective caw, a one note squawk from the multitude that should have been more fragmented Pulling off the taped package under his shirt, he pulled his shirt down again, turned about, ready to dart into the fields and lay low if need be, but the escaping birds and their flight (and the house’s vantage point atop the hill) was enough of a view to show him the chase, as it started, was distant. And growing more distant. A chainsaw kicked up, the purred rumble causing more birds to take wing in curious circular clutches, all simultaneous, and that was error number one hundred and three and four right there.

Rolling his eyes, he was unimpressed by the profanity, a woman’s voice drawing from the more vulgar edges of English and Spanish, and gasping all the while, was in full flight, and that was good enough. John turned his back to the retreating ruckus and commenced with his plans of breaking and entering. Pulling open a baggie, a lunch sack taken from a school, all translucent and peculiarly sturdy, he’d slipped in the original odds and ends of his pockets within it during a span of being hunted long ago. He’d never seen that killer, only heard a peculiar humming from time to time. That Trial he’d taken to climbing the walls of the main school building, avoiding killer and killed while he tested the lateral parameters of that hunting ground. Until, by chance, he’d stumbled onto a fire escape. Wanting a break from climbing he had taken the easy route to the roof. A vivisected body, dark haired yet dark skinned… thus not his Amanda, but someone precious to another perhaps… lay atop it. A hinged trap door beside the carrion had sprung open at his regard, the angle of the body, the tilt of the head, struck down while looking back though there was nothing to look back at.... Until something smoky and long limbed had reared, rising form the dead girl’s shadow and he’d heard the humming from before. Steel scraped against steel, but he’d followed instinct then and ran towards that exit and the thing had not expected prey to come from that angle, he’d beat those claws and curious smoldering of the world by centimeters. The trap door had slammed on a claw, that’d danced madly trying to get to his head before pulling back with a profanity from a raspy man’s voice, then it’d been silence and wandering earthen halls until ascent and opening into another trail.

Once observing the killer, the man who melded trees and ghosts together with glowing eyes as a side, he’d found a hiding place and taken stock of his spoils.

His spoils for his near capture were a set of bags which he’d transferred the contents of his pockets into, shaking them violently to test their durability, and once satisfied he’d taped them to his frame never mind how the adhesive itched, a half-eaten sandwich which he finished then and there, and a semi clean water bottle he’d first cleaned in the trial he found it in and filled before starting his climb. He used that to wash the rank garlic bologna down and hunkered in to wait on the other survivors to begin their usual motions of startlement and scatter to light the path for their escape. As for him, he’d fiddled with cars and the like, memorizing which ones opened, and which did not until he was caught and hooked. Wheeled up and away by the creature that was more sky than mass and curiously enough, sinister “tentacle” since handed seemed wrong and the left appendages always struck first. John filed away that information and took bitter pleasure, as the claws sunk into his belly and he began the slow process of dying, that the bologna had tasted fowl, and the recoiling of one claw he was sure was in his stomach seemed to attest to that fact that he’d eaten something fowl enough to deter a demon..

It was the small pleasures, really, that kept you going in hell.

And it was a pleasure, really, to apply the bits and bobs from before, from the proto type of his latest trap he and Amanda had been working on. Something that ground and tore, a deviation of his reverse bear trap and it’s shark like fangs… The idea had been there, something to wear and tear slowly, something that’d break a body down in a span from nine to five, Amanda, having the song stuck in her head had hummed it loudly enough it’d gotten into _his_ head, hence inspiration of a sorts had struck, and irritation as he’d had to quietly sing it to himself to excise the tune…

Still they’d been experimenting with “fangs” and the like and the miniature’s teeth were quite small, and in a pinch mimicked a lock pick set quite beautifully. The aged lock didn’t stand a chance.

A creak and click and he was in, pocketing the lock in with the bag of metal odds and ends, and there was issue number one hundred and six, and pressure, even that of the door being pushed open, should have brought the lot down and there were no hinges holding the lot together though it swung and… John was about this close to stop counting, the number just kept going up nearly every moment.

Heaving a sigh, John swore, haloed by light, gleaming and bright, was a generator. Besides it, near lost in its shadow was a bag, and the sound from before kicked up again, louder and clearer, and to that he lost his ire. Going to the shadow, he took up the bag, a small one, five pounds, tipping it right side, brushing off dust he was able to make out its symbol. A stylized wheat sheaf, a quick fumble of the burlap bags top and he could see and smell the stuff inside. Though musty it looked right, a brush of his fingers over the top lair attested it felt vaguely like the grains his wife had so adored in her morning cereals and felt akin to the raw stuff she’d handled ground even, when she’d been researching diets and the like best for their unborn child.

Then there’d been that span, her baking obsession.

The messes, he mused, had been spectacular, and she’d seemed mildly insulted when he’d made her that device to do the grinding for her. Not that she had stopped using it; still she’d been a bit… miffed by the thing. Complaining of its noisiness when they had nothing else to quibble about. As it was those experiences gave him knowledge enough to safely identify the grain, a glance behind the machine confirmed his second hunch.

Clucking, a chicken, save again it wasn’t, yet it was. He mentally dubbed it Number One Hundred and Seven. The animal was unnaturally blocky, with a squared beak. It was an albino crow, save flightless, and squared, and fat, and clucking. More importantly… visual discrepancy notwithstanding the egg on the edge of its small cage looked mundane enough, round even, and to that he smiled, a tight, pleased lift of his lips. There was more than one, crates piled upon crates, save they were light like a pet carrier and smooth though made of aged, dirty, wood. The lot clucked at him, at his arrival, then raised a clamor as stepped out of their range of sight, only to still at his return. Bright red beady eyes stared at him, his clenched hands, and remained silent as they ate when he unclenched his fist and let food fall where it would. 

And again, John considered a matter of numbers, and then decided to just take the opportunity and let his count lapse a little.

Pulling the closest of the lot with him, he set the bird’s carrier in his hands, and the grain atop it, with another handful chucked at the remaining, a bribe of sorts, and left to the sound of pecking and quiet coos. His purloined bird, it’s egg, and after depositing his catch into the grass he went back to better check the other cages, and walked out with two more eggs, those he slipped in with his bird, which then tamely settled upon the purloined lot, adding a bit of natural padding as he took a slow creeping path back towards the gate with his future meal in tow.

He’d already found a indent in the field, a span to hide what he needed and with some creeping he could access enough of a rise on said intents lip that unless the killer walked on top of him and his hiding place he could see when the gates sprung open, when they did, he’d take goods and exit and perhaps with this peace offering of sorts he’d be able to meet these evasive others he’d spied on, doing their spider driven dance of living and dying about the generators.

If not… well he’d see where the next Trial placed him. If it was that cabin in the woods, well there might be a kitchen within, and the thought of food, a true meal, was hope enough for that moment. With the small blockish bird, and the little pleasures on his mind, anticipated and deferred, John crept, then hunkered within his hiding place. His adlibbed hair attachments making him seem a shorter mound of grass on a little rise perhaps. It was more satisfying than playing dead in the bathroom, easer on the nose if nothing else. And he wasn’t wholly alone. He whiled the time with providing another fist full of seeds. First to his curiously quiet caged bird, then on whim he tossed some out to the dark, and about him, formed a small murder. The lot was, as his bound one was, curiously silent, and it was only the sound of pecking and misplaced wind that served as company.

As for the screams, the rumble of the chainsaw, and chase, it was far behind him, though not beyond him, he kept half an ear tilted towards it. Setting in place contingencies, on what he’d leave and try to salvage if those neon red pulsating claws descended four times…. Well tentatively four, he’d cut his losses and start looking for the hatch third thunder less descent, when the organic lighting sunk down and set chilling carrion to that sky bound maw. There hadn’t been any deaths, as far as he’d known, though there’d been screams, thus death had been differed. It was a phenomenon he wished to see but he abstained. Supplies and parameters were the order of the day, these... others… could run their futile cycles of their spider jail keep without him for a little longer.

When the bars clanged down, he stood, his rise did not set the Murder to wing, rather the thundering steps of some survivor of this Trials rigors did. He looked back, and they approached, a man in glasses, the woman who’d entreated him to caution besides her wounded peer, she was half carrying half dragging the slender man, and behind them, gaining, was the familiar murder. Running so vigorously it panted, it’s false skin flapping grotesquely a parody of a fat man’s run, the killer was curiously without his chainsaw. Some misadventure had the brute having swapped the noisy weapon for something meant to kill cows.

Which he waved over his head, grunting and squealing, stilling his run to stomp and grunt, to catch a second wind as it seemed this lot’s plan was to literally run their attacker ragged had born fruit and perhaps the foul winds triggered something like an asthma attack in their pursuer.

The crusting of thready muck about the weapon’s head told of it being applied to alternative prey and him missing a kill while taking in his surroundings. John considered, flight and himself, all unseen for that moment, and then decision made he acted. He’d accelerate his plans a bit on the social front. Slipping form his hiding spot, snapping up stolen foodstuff he took to his heels. And frustratingly there came a flash of light, a flashlight snapped over his eyes, then swept down to his bird that hissed in reptilian distaste and chittered quite… familiarly.

Resolving to make sure he wasn’t the first to eat from his catch’s takings, John tried a smile, he must look a parody of the tall shimmering creature with an axe, or perhaps a feral satire of some neighbor coming over to get some sugar.

Quelling a rather juvenile impulse to offer the wounded man welcome to the satanic sacrifice, he’d brought the chicken for blood rite and if they could get the killer a bit closer to get the lot started… Well he didn’t speak his mind then, just trotted forward, giving the wounded man the box which the younger took tamely enough. The flashlight was off, clipped to the young ladies belt, and to that he nodded his gratitude.

“Hold that,” A belated suggestion that the man was cradling the hissing boxed occupant all dazedly, the blood loss and sag to the side of the man’s shirt was… ominous… and familiar considering his history of seeing human disfigurement he gathered they had a few yards before the hold was lost, luckily for them all the gate was also a few yards away. “And I’ll take one side, you the other my dear, and we’ll get out of here before that recovers, hm?”

He’d hardly needed to indicate the wheezing thing at their backs, that monster, which upon seeing him, and perhaps the stolen chicken, was staggering after them again, the outraged grunts drew closer. Canting him a smile, part amused, part incredulous, she did take the other side, quietly obedient that one. And together the three crossed over the threshold, leaving the skin stealing killer slobbering and spitting at the bars to their backs. The clang of hammer answered an earlier question, about a tool’s effectiveness upon the Entity’s barriers, no burglary required.


	4. fetching protien

It was disquieting, that days after days of only having his own company he’d have so many to appear… well mundane towards. It was not nearly as eerie of watching a man near death knit up, of blood flowing backwards, upwards, and inwards. The hole unseen puffed out, the edges pushed against his supporting arm, hardened, a coagulation of callous and scarring, then he’d had to drop his finds to better support the glasses wearing man, as he writhed and healed. Whimpering softly into the taller of the two, thus John was supporting him and getting an earful at the same time.

Still he was hearty enough, hale enough never mind he had been on oxygen a mere week before, for one arm to wind about and support, for his frame to take the bulk of the burden, of his free hand he slid it first to the boy’s pulse point, it hammered violently under his fingers, scrolling up he found the younger man’s hair line, smoothing sweat soaked locks and murmuring nonsense noise.

Mouthing a quiet “thanks” this woman and present partner in transport took a second to peel back the younger man’s shirt least “It get eaten by the healing” and better watch… well she grew pale at the actions of healing, and swallowed thickly, but then seeing his gaze and perhaps construing it as worried, she smiled.

“It’s looking better; we can get him covered in a moment. It’s to the last layers of the skin, when they knit we can set his shirt down that way things don’t get… tangled up.” Patting the younger man’s thigh she hiked up the shirt a bit more. “You’re doing great Dwight, just a little more…”

John nodded, shifting his grip and shifting from smoothing to raking, “You’re doing well, and your partner says were almost done. Just a few more moments. Try to breathe, deep and slow, to better drown out the pain. It’s here, yes,” Glasses dug into his cheek, as the younger man straightened, perhaps too fast, he curled into John, hands fisting on the older man’s soiled robes. “But you are too. Pain is a sensation, neurons and chemicals, a fragment of you; you are greater and whole… So breathe, easy and slow, it will pass… This will pass…”

Not without tears, the younger man had cried, curling into him, and the young woman, politely adverted her eyes, picking up John’s gatherings… his housewarming gift all accidental the older man supposed, wordlessly, and when Dwight staggered to standing on his own John took his gifting from the woman, who’d smiled, and apologized for the light.

Then all absent minded, she introduced herself, prioritizing perceived hurt and it’s mending over what people would consider real manners.

To that John smiled, a tired up tick of his lips, and tendered his first name, then his last. And from her… nothing, no recognition, and to that relief he forgave her with a wry.

“I suppose in fickle light I might have looked like that axe wielding one.”

“We call him The Wraith. The tall one with the bell and… skull axe thingie.”

“The bell?” John hadn’t seen that, been a bit too entranced with the cars and what he could take from them. The coil of wires he’d salvaged and a few keys he’d purloined and finding their purpose’s had held more interest than the mechanics of the man who wanted him dead.

After he’d discovered this… pseudo immortality and that death was… while painful, a finite thing and rebirth with most of his memories attached was the outcome. With such a light toll John had hardly cared for dying, save it was unpleasant, and like most prudent souls he avoided it when he could and endured it when he could not.

“He dings himself invisible.”

Well that was _one_ way to phrase it, and to that Dwight laughed, loosening the last of his hold, a companionable arm slung over both their shoulders while he’d steadied after a near fall, to try a few steps. When he didn’t fall, only swayed slightly, he tried a few more. Besides her companion, the woman, Claudette kept pace; arm stretched in obvious intent to catch him is he fell. As for John he shuffled his grip, a knee to the cage causing something to rattle and it’s occupant to cluck at him in irritation, once settled, and pecked no less, he picked up the pace a few steps behind the pair.

The grass and corn were a distant memory, the clanging tantrum of their pursuer was long silent and the ground was an unusual smear of grey. Featureless and stretching about them, a dull mist seeped from its smooth surface even as it crunched under each step like sand yet stayed as solid as cement. John tried to scrape a toe over the lot and it.. buckled, responding to the pressure of his scraped step, before flexing back into shape when he lifted his toe up for even a second.

When she dithered, looking from him to her obvious friend, well John couldn’t wave a hand so he managed a mild roll of his eyes and she caught the friendly slant to his scorn and smiled back.

“Meg calls him Ding Dong. Jake says he’s Chickenlegs.”

“He has chicken legs?” John hummed, amused at so juvenile an insult, the first made a smidgen of sense the latter spoke of a complex, perhaps a short persons lament, or at least a petty person who had been short. Unless there were scales under the hunter’s long clothes and feathers, then John would cede this other’s point and say nothing more on the topic. Except perhaps inquire on if it had any other powers, perhaps skills taken from the lore of the baba yagga. The promise of such a conversation cheered him a bit. Such cheer took the bite out of his newest wound though it did nothing about the blood on his fingers and the mocking slant to his present captive’s clucking.

“No, that’s just Jake’s name for him.”

And was dashed a bit, but John would hold judgment until after the first meeting and some time had passed after it. While valuable first impressions weren’t everything after all.

Just how many of these.. others… were there anyway? More than these two, clearly more than four though he only had four names to work with. Letting his smile falter, John tried to recall features of those he’d spied while… well it wasn’t sulking, he’d been testing the terrain to its breaking, seeking an unconventional out sans generators and the mechanics of hunting and hunter, but any other term evaded him at the moment.

“I know I was hoping he’d know a little about the old stories, like the yagaba thing from Russian horror stories, stuff like that seems useful to know but besides me and Adam… well there aren’t many readers… Besides you of course, so long as it’s a little buggy…” The young lady was gently ribbed and nudged back a bit as well. Catching the tell, even if she hadn’t, John rattled his catch meaningfully. Claudette took up feed with a murmured “that looks heavy” and while it wasn’t John did not comment save to say thanks and she took place between the both of them quietly enough.

And about them the mist rose, thick on either side, like walls, obscuring horizon and the span about them in each direction save an alluring span of forward where they were gently being herded.

It’d been on the tip of John’s tongue to comment, to draw attention to the less than subtle influence being spun about before them, save Claudette, with a wordless noise that bespoke of recalling something, turned to him, her expression was a curious commingling of hope and concern, and to that he stilled his questions, waiting for hers.

“Oh I meant to ask… And I’m sorry I didn’t before…” She was an apologetic one, this child. Apologizing for things she really needed not too. He’d gently dissuade her from it as time permitted, still that was for later, for now he schooled his face to attentive and waiting and she… she bit her lip and plowed ahead. “Well, I was wondering, did you find her, your Amanda? I asked about and no one’s seen or met anyone with that name and I wanted to tell you… but this is the first time we’re really been able to talk, and I should have said something earlier, and I’m sorry I didn’t but…”

“But your friend obviously needed your words and kindness more than I needed your assurance of an unknown.” John completed smoothly. “It’s alright, as a matter of fact I _did_ encounter her, and… that is quite a tale I’d like to not have to tell twice, so I hope you’ll understand when I say, for now, that matter is closed?”

To that the young woman nodded, dark hair bobbling along with her, content to focus on both forward and her friend and as for the young man who’d been spared entanglement of flesh and cloth he looked back, thoughtful, considering, and with a curious mirror to the young ladies -a nip of the lip, some minor chewing, minor tells of stewing- to such he rose an eyebrow, jested that “were they related, he thought he spied a resemblance?” well that was enough to get Claudette to sputter a no. That, while Dwight was “really nice and all but they weren’t going out, or related, or anything”, and that hadn’t been what John had asked at all.

And when she realized _that_ she flushed all the harder for it and was mercifully silent thereafter. Even if that well-earned quiet left John struggling not to laugh. To correct and coerce the story behind that reaction. What he was sure was her reaction was not romantic longing in the slightest. He’d been through such, been around long enough to see that dance in others, both of a healthy and unhealthy slant, and this had none of those tells though the vapid might think it such. But the feel of this was perhaps the mark of teasing gone wrong. The _who_ and _when_ of such would be more than a tell, and perhaps would be telling of those he was to meet. Still as she had willingly fallen silent he was uninclined to take away that choice she’d made for herself… Well it was a relief and frustration, if only a minor one and the next few steps were quiet at least until Dwight cleared his throat, and slowed a few steps so the three were nearly abreast, with him only leading by a step at most.

With a roll of his shoulders and flick of an arm, first left, than right, John bundled the edge of is robes close, not for warmth but to keep this newly acquired congregation from tripping on his outer garments for they were long enough to flow. A curious vanity courtesy of Amanda’s needle and one he’d been at first amused by, but then circumstance had made the lot horridly useful and he’d jerryrigged pockets and padding of the excess.

“I am… I didn’t think to even thank you for earlier, so… thanks.”

“As nearly dying is rarely a pleasure.” John Kramer drawled, drawing amusement on the many many angles he could play with that one sentence, but for this meeting’s sake he’d not. “I’ll not say “Any time” or the even worse “It was a pleasure”, just to eschew any unnecessary lying, mind.”

“Well,” setting glasses more to one side than the other, one lens more fragment held together by mercy of god than actual construction, Dwight cracked a tired smile. “Thanks for that too, I guess.”

Grass, sprung of nothing, not there one step, formed and muffling the next on descent caused John to jolt and to that Claudette wound an arm about him shoulders, and his breakfast all mobile started a horrendous clucking, and it was to breakfast all a fluttered, and a young ladies arm about his shoulders to steady him, that they broke through mist and were greeted by the many many stares of the people gathered about it.

He counted well over ten, and he wasn’t even trying in that moment to catalogue the lot.

“We’re back…” Dwight murmured, twiddling a little wave at the mass, the lot was distinctly frigid at first glance despite them gathering about the fire. John slid a finger about his wrist, feeling sheath if not blade, still the lot was braced with steel, it’d give a punch a bit of an edge if the blade was still absent. “And we got someone new?”

Silence, glares, then Claudette, perhaps acting oblivious, spun about, nudged him forward never knowing he’d twitched his arm in instinct, to summon his blade, and his befuddlement of it not working was the only thing that got her behind him long enough to push him to the fore.

“We got protein,” Before John could begin to worry, she amended. “Chickens mean eggs and omelets, right?”

And to that base offering, of food, they softened, at least towards the box in his hands and its clucking occupant rather then him.

It was, all in all, a not so promising start.


	5. meet and greet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Repartee repeated, a tragedy alluded, and John gets some bearings as to how broke things are among the survivors.

It was impulse, a base bit of bitterness that built as he watched people gathered about flames herded about, and cued up into a line with minimal protest. He thought, initially of a firing squad, save he was unarmed as they were, the comparisons to sheep in a pen sans walls also lingered in his mind. In the end, when he stood at the end of the line formed, watching it fold into being before him, he decided on his analogy. The old hand shake down the line, the final hurrah of acknowledging the losing side to the ego stoking of the winning side. 

It took considerable effort not to ask what he had lost. Even as he extended his hand, taking the first Survivor’s before him, as they’d dubbed themselves, welcoming him with a dry, “Welcome to the Survivors” and chorused, out of tune no less. The first, was mercifully familiar, and enthusiastic, she having broken ranks to take his bird, set it near the fire, then trot back presently.

“I’m half a mind to ask who’s brilliant idea this is.” John drawled, drawing a snicker further down the line. Then, because a weakness was ever irresistible, he tweeked her gently. “No flashlight?”

“If you don’t stop you’re getting a cold omelet for breakfast Mr. Kramer.”

“Then I shall.”

Her self-defense, though stuttered, had a bit of steel to it, and he smiled gently, encouragingly, and stepping to the side, to a young thing that bounced quite enthusiastically setting her pig tails to bobbing along with her. She’s eyeing his garb quite overtly, and so she isn’t completely knocked off his branch by her chirped.

“I’m here for the virgin sacrifice!”

“I sincerely doubt that,” Some enthusiast clapped further down the line, five people down he thought, he’d expect a witticism again when that number rolled about. “and how long did you spend thinking that one line up, anyways, young lady?

Wrinkling her nose, face freckles disappearing in the lines of her scrunch she huffed. “First: rude. And second, for that I’m not telling.”

“Fair.”

She seemed almost nonplused by his lack of lingering, and if that’s all it took this lot was going to be.. an experience. Laughing, stepping forward and taking his hands before he could even set his right, she spoke with a curious accent and had a pair of bewitching green eyes that might have set his heart to quickening if he weren’t so intricately tied to another… And not over thirty years her senior, still there was something of Jill to the tip of her lips and her quiet voice, never mind the accent he couldn’t quite place.

“Name’s Nea, and congrats on being one of the four not getting flustered by her mouth, she means well but is a bit much at times.”

“I’ll consider myself warned.”

“David.” So spoke the next, cutting in by setting a hand on the young woman’s shoulder and nudging her back to better step forward. She glared at him, her gaze promising retribution and John’d look forward to seeing it when it occurred. Jake had a near crushing grip, hands hot and tough, and John met the man’s beady eyes squarely, not flinching though the grip set pins and needles along his knuckles. “Got some stories behind those scars of yours, Kramer?”

To that John raised an eyebrow. “Arthritis surgeries, fires, metal, the usual. It’d be best if you do not touch my wrist brace,” the blade might slip though, and what a tragedy that would be, still those hands did let go and the man stepped back.

“Sorry mate, didn’t realize…”

But John was moving on; to another man whose face, unfortunately, had been left so unshaven several bear comparisons and analogies sprung to mind and wouldn’t leave.

“Let’s skip the shake and spare your hands, there’s a load of us left after all.”

To that John nodded, warmed. “Your consideration is noted.”

“Metal, like craft working?”

“Civil engineer, but I dabble.” John hummed. “Yourself?”

“Everything and anything, mainly graphics but I’d love to talk shop again when it’s a bit less… packed. Jeff Johanson,” a heckled ,“Goes by JAYJAY” was ignored by both. “Please, _don’t_ listen to Meg.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

A huffed laugh and John moved on. He meant to bow politely to the young lady before him, taking cues from the slant of her eyes and turn of her features, he reviewed the few formal encounters with those of Asian descent he’d met from his wife’s work place, but she shook her head, preempting him. “Not _that_ traditional, old man.”

Clearly not.

“Feng Min, professional gamer, and to be really crass because I can, hiya.”

“I’m not touching that sentence with anything like a response. Miss.”

“Wuss.” Though an insult she grinned. “I’d bet my best controller Meg’ll cut in and bug you again, she’s been standing still too long. You can hear the gears turning.”

Oh, John cold hear them, compiling to the steel snap as their coils wound to maximum tension and released… But that was for other time and place, and by the scuffle and a few “bugger offs” well it was a fools bet to counter.

A few steps, and John was face to face with a man a hair taller than him, stocker, with a perma stubble that as mercifully tame compared to Jeff’s. He made a mental note to ask where the razors were kept, he’d look like a silvery mop coming and going soon enough. “So, how are the middle ages?”

“Mercifully bereft of the cheap cigars you favor.”

Nea and Feng whooped at that one. Instead of balking, or pulling his feature obscuring shades slowly in an intimidating manner, the man froze, and then let his lips twitch into a smile.

“For that, none for you. By the way, you’ve a beautiful poker face, any interest in a hand?”

“You know gambling is a sin in many sects?”

“Church isn’t my thing?” The note at sentence’s end… well to debase them of any delusions, John snorted.

“Nor mine, the garb was a gift, sturdy sleepwear from someone with… questionable taste and a bit too much time on her hands. Warm though.”

“Trust me, red’ll get you far here. Last the longest at least.”

The veteran was next, and besides flaunting a thick accent and a reek of even cheaper and fresher smokes, he spit his rank and station, near clicked his heels and John replied with his full name before stepping right along. To a woman with thin blonde hair, and a bit more shadows around her eyes than the youngest and a near monotone when she spoke.

“Strode.”

“A pleasure.” He was an older soul, the flattery slid off his tongue without a thought, manners and habit more than anything and she warmed to it, looking past some internal vista to see him and nod.

“You remind me of someone, I just can’t remember who at the moment.” She noted, making Meg, who’d been trying to shove past a boy her age stop and gawk, clearly the full sentence was an achievement of sorts if the gawking about her on both sides, gawking she didn’t respond to, not hunching in herself as other poor souls would, but there was something of retreat in her stillness and the shuttering of her eyes.

“I hope it’s a happy association.”

She near smiled at that, her face almost spasoming at some emotion tried and failed to manifest. “Life isn’t.” And to that morose assurance she did hunch, stepping back, and to that, because he must, he slid a hand forward. Where others had grabbed and poked and prodded him, her he reached for, setting a feather light digit to her wrist, entreating she linger, a moment, her pulse under his fingers was slow, near wooden as was her regard.

“Wasn’t.” He warned and cajoled both at once. “Previous life _wasn’t_ , it isn’t over yet, the futures still being built from this moment and all others.”

Another curious face twitch, her eyes gleamed just so, then, whispered. ”Please let me go.”

So he did, though he hadn’t been holding on, just brushing his fingers over her wrist with the barest of pressures. Once freed she slipped off, slumping to fire to better sit and regard the burning, a few of the others he’d spoken too, the gamer among them, shifted out of formation to join her. The large one, who’d taken to looming and cueing the lot up huffed and complained, a younger one, a young man perhaps high school aged, snapped “Fuck off King, sporty meet and greets not that important” and he cut out of the lot, with a dry. “Quinten, like the robes, they look nice, will catch you later.” Then he stepped out of his place to join the small clutch around the pale, tall woman who’d he’ talked to last.

It was him, and the familiar Dwight, a woman partially familiar, and one he was quite assured was dead per newscast and the like. He’d been speaking to his ex-wife about her “disappearance” mere days ago when she’d visited him in one of his… subterranean workshops to better help Amanda set up the new oxygen tanks and do a deep clean. Jill had not been quite distraught, but she’d needed some comfort and he’d offered what he could while struggling to breathe.

“Ms. Romero?” John blinked, not quite believing his eyes. Hell this might be, but he’d thought she’d be immune to such a descent per her acts of charity and compassion if nothing else. “I’m not… ah dreaming?”

“If so please wake me up on your way to coherence.” She countered, and then softened, losing the buried edge of her frustration at being recognized by “another fan” perhaps. “I’m sorry… it’s been a bad few weeks. Actually, if you aren’t going to join the... whatever that is I was hoping I could talk to you, about the young lady Ms. Morrell mentioned, a ‘Manda?”

Heart quickening, John nodded, smoothing the edges of his robe with sweaty hands. “If you know anything… I’d be grateful.”

“I’m not too sure how much this helps, some of the kids claim it’s 2020 and the like… but I did have a young lady named Amanda on my styling team. I wanted to touch base with you personally though, not give false hope if it wasn’t _your_ Amanda… Can you tell me anything about the young lady whose missing and I’ll let you know if we’ve got a match?”

“And,” that voice though not twisted into melody was heartbreaking familiar, he’d filed his divorce papers under the croon of one of her songs, the lawyer they’d used had been… at best a bit unprofessional but then the break had been an amiable one, where bickering and possessions had been of little contest and she’d gotten as much of the lion share are he’d dare gift her without drawing any creditor’s attentions. “If you don’t mind me listening in, I’ve got two ‘Mandys, and an Amanda with my own folks and tours… So maybe one of us has a match, even if it’s not your when and where’s Amanda, if the others are right about different times and stuff, it might be hope of something…”

Swallowing, John cleared his throat, heart racing at the implication of being here years. His thought fastened to Jill, then shaking his head he opened his mouth, feeling dry and parched all at once. “At this point I’ll take any scratching of hope for things being better than they are now… She’s a small woman, five four or so, pale, brown hair, a bit sickly seeming and worn as her life has been in continual upheaval for the last few… years. If time is displaces as you hypothesized she well… I hope she’s doing better. But she has scars on her arms, and wears long sleeves to better hide them. She’s a soft spoke woman, with a perchance of singing when thinking and stressed and… Well whenever she thinks she’s alone.”

To that the Ms. Romero smiled. “Sounds like quite the song bird, was she Latino? Mine was, loved to braid her hair and then some…”

“Unfortunately she came from an unhappy home life, she never identified as such to my knowledge, and she definitely did not look so in her pictures… I saw a few of her childhood pictures in the system… She had a criminal record… I work in rehabilitation these days and from what of her records I could access. I’d say no.”

“’Manda’s deaf, not one to sing… sorry Mr. Kramer, my company has strict policies about crime records… I know the other two are not scared up, maybe there from her before she got hurt or… well did anything?”

“She was horribly young when outside circumstances got that bad that she stooped to steeling and getting caught a few days after… The scaring started in her early teens I suspect, though her medical charts contradict it…” John shrugged to both celebrities, robes rustling, bemused, that in hell of all places he was meeting them both, twin beacons of hope and social justice no less. “Thank you though, both, for your candidness and your willingness to help.”

“Anytime.” Kate Denson demurred, she flushed quite prettily and he, done with this meet and greet, stepped back, to let them leave all uncontested.

“Dwight,” The younger man, most familiar stirred, from looking after the two stars to considering the fire and the cluster about it. “Please, a bit of candor for this old man, was that everyone?”

Silence, a wince, then murmured. “Almost.”

John glared at him.

“Sorta? Nearly? Not everyone stays, King’s… an experience. Zir’ said she’d stay solo in this hell run before dealing with his chauvinistic crap…. And we’ve a few others who just won’t come over and we sorta see from time to time… but that’s like ninety percent of us?”

“There’s other fires, with other people?” John gawped. “More mobs?”

To that Dwight huffed. “No one knows, I mean we do generators, then get back here because who’d want to really dig about in trials.. I mean except you, you found a chicken and that’s more meat than we’ve seen in years…”

Closing his eyes, if he were a man meant for prayer John would have indulged. As it was he swore in his head, then cracked open his eyes, irritated suddenly beyond words. Clearly the experience, Mr. King, had been stemming the lot left and right if they hadn’t found a chicken in that monster’s oversized farm. This… alluded to rampant poisonous problems. As did the Strode woman’s stoniness, and Meg’s unchecked rambunctiousness that’d only stopped when tragedy distracted her. Lifting a hand, the unbladed one, John ran his digits over his temples in short soothing circles.

“It gets better?”

The timid assurance, more question than fact, made the pain stab higher and deeper and if he weren’t familiar with the agony of stage four colon cancer John would have called the migraine in the making unbearable.

As it was he didn’t, it still did not make the lot more palatable, even with the proper scope to properly grasp it.


	6. Immediatly after

It’d figured mere moments after his forced “Meet and Greet” he’s whisked away. It’s less a shimmering fanciful transport than he’s expecting from the others babbling and more a displacement of the sense of sight as the mist that’s coiled around the camp like a serpent sweeps in, filing the air, and with a windless billow that does not cause his crusted clothes to even stir he’s is taking a step, shaking his head to push back the dizziness from the soft grasses of the camp are replaced with the brittle crunch of leaves. The fire, and it’s illumination that had been his sole point of reference had winked out in the deluge, but when it cleared his center point had been restored, and changed.

It was small, round. Fire flickered about its fangs, pulp and rind glinted wetly despite the flame. Slashed into a lopsided smile, the pumpkin grinned eyeless eyes staring straight ahead, watching brainlessly as Kramer shook one foot, than the other, both motions drawing a leafy rustle.

There was mist, fast receding, a tide in reverse. And before him was a house, white though weather beaten, a glance down showed he was standing in the center of a leaf pile swept together under the leafless limbs of a bone white birch tree… As for the leaves, there were no paths leading in, the rake that’s bound them was in easy grasping range, an open bad besides that and only minimally lined. As if some soul had started a chore, far too late in the evening, and had abandoned it midway so that John could be whisked into their incomplete, itchy, labor at the whim of some sky spider demon.

More on whim than anything else he grabbed the rake, intending to see how force worked against… well he’d find something. Not the bar grates, but perhaps he could force open the door of the house in front of him if it was locked. It’d be a tamer way to vent his frustration and the activity would help clear his thoughts.

Turning the tool over in his hands, setting its butt to the moist ground as he picked his way out and itched abysmally, he noted that the bolts holding metal head to hollow feeling wooden shaft were high quality. Far higher caliber than actually needed or used on a commercial item. Well, he could think of two ways to extract them, one not even requiring power tools.

Eyes lingering on the door, three steps up, each step wide and as white washed as the house, he considered it. Opened or closed he’d know soon enough, the barrier looked promisingly thick, and it would spare him having to circle around the building besides the house to find opening to… well he thought it might be a shed. It had that damned blocky look and slapdash placing that screamed Entity incompetence. Still, there might be something worthwhile inside. 

Picking his way across near boringly stereotypical yard, all grassy and flat, the buildings about screaming midnight suburbia, save all the lights were on and there wasn’t a soul around and about, John took to those steps, and on the rise listened, lingered, but seeing and hearing nothing he deduced it safe enough.

The door was locked, easily remedied when he found the spare under the door mat. And again, this was a curious thing considering the sign in the grass besides the building declared it sold. In the distance he could see something, flickering lights behind a different building, perhaps police lights, the street lights around this home were all lit, the ones behind it were not. And again, long acquaintance with horror as a genre and a budding acquaintanceship with this damned spider demons bastardizations of expectations told that there’d be nothing but tragedy to this house.

Or more likely generators easily found, thus the killer would be lurking here if he wasn’t already watching John’s approach from some window.

Well let him, he’d deal with whoever haunted this spot of near perfect suburbia when they came.

But first, he had a bit of destruction to tend to. And after testing the heft and steadiness of the hinges (no squeaking he was spared adding a tally there) John set the rake to lie in the path of destruction and slammed the door on it, hard.

It near vaporized. The fragmentations of wood and splinters he swept up on the sleeves of his robes, scattering them generously under the windows, another bout of making a new meaning to break and enter and the teeth of the rake were added to the wood, the remaining staff of the rake he set to bar the front door, and that was as secure as he could make it for things coming in. Still, he wasn’t going to linger long, he slipped across the living room, hard wood, again no creeks of squeaks, and he wasn’t sure if that should be added to the tally or not. Furniture covered in beige wraps were the ghosts of the hour, a questing finger found the coverings dusty, and loose. He bundled a thicker one, not recalling seeing bedding or tents of any type, and hoped they had means to clean sheets and garments back at the camp. He’d assume not for now, jerry rig some means to get clean, but his circuit of the living room and entry way done he pressed on. First north, to find first a hall leading to a stairwell that lead up. It was a white banister affair, the lights on, but dim. Curiously, besides it one going down was another, save the banister was black and below something red… glistened. More importantly than the blatant cues before him there were boxes stacked in the corner, those he moved. Well, he _meant_ to rummage through, looting, but when the opening refused, nail and edge of his gauntlet cum arm brace not giving the tape a hair of lift, John accepted the lot as a lost cause and scattered them along the steps of both paths.

Hopefully anything coming up or down would take a tumble, at worst he’d only get a few moments warning per the noise, at best he’d break some would be hunter’s bones.

Guilt, or something like, gnawed on him a moment. He might have, possibly, warned the lot that he was one to set traps, but then the mist had come so damnably fast and Amanda was more important than all their bones. Promising younglings notwithstanding. He’d pull a pseudo innocence, an “I didn’t know”. And it wasn’t utter hypocrisy, because he _did not_ know if any others had been whisked with him into this new kill zone and if they took harm from his efforts to defend himself… Well he’d make amends where he could.

As for now he slipped about the house, being mindful not to stand in view of the windows, again to the living room then a turnabout and he quit wood for linoleum tiles and a room meant to be a kitchen save there was very little unpacked. The only thing available, centered amongst a counter of nothingness was a wood block lined with knives, none of them varying in size, though some were serrated, and all were steak, or styled to look like such. Again, it was obvious, still to this John bit, pocketing one of them by sliding it through a span of his belt, an adlibbed sheath of sliced fabric wound about steel, dulling it’s shine and looping about loosely around the hilt so it’d have some resistance for stabbing him as he moved about. Testing the facet, and daring a nip, he filled his water bottle then rummaged through the fridge. Within he found a case of beer, sans a bottle, a dusty list for groceries that’d been pinned but fallen free, a note about emergency contacts that was holding under the march of time by better magnetization, and warming instructions for a stove he’d thought was a box and been blurred by an Entity that clearly did not know what a stove was supposed to look like an had made one of the moving boxes over wide, tall, and glossy, with a bar of metal sticking out of it which was meant to open and close the oven’s door.

On whim he pulled down on said bar to get it open, the whole clanked, shuddered, and something within lit and spun, humming, like a microwave.

Leaving the frankenstien kin of microwave and oven to do _whatever_ it was doing, John took the rest of the blades off the block, and decided he’d better decorate the lower level windows, perhaps anoint the stairway arm grips with an edge, and then check the upper levels for whatever he could use. The cover shredded quite nicely and he adlibbed binds of it as he walked, setting edge after edge.

Within he found a young ladies bedroom, all pink striped, with bands he recognized from the last gasps of his own adolescence. Though he’d had better taste, he thought, it amused him to see so many “classics” in their fluff haired glory days once more all accidental. The calendar… a thing with inspirational messages and beach scenes, he stared, first utterly disbelieving, then pulled it down to better stare at it.

May, late May, _1977_ , a weekend date had been blocked out with a note to “Catch that new star something movie, looks awesome” done in a loopy handwriting, the sight of such set his stomach to roiling, and suddenly feeling sick he sat down, knives and plans to their use forgotten as he took a seat on the edge of some little girl’s bed, above, twinkling irrelevantly, some toy swayed about. He reached up unseeing, fumbling for an off button and accidentally knocking the lot down.

Swearing, hopping to his feet untangling his hand from threads and poorly pinned stuffed animals John tucked the calendar under his arm, the bite of its edge assuring him the physicality of the item was real if nothing else. Above, something jangled, and more than irritated that the noise hadn’t stopped he looked up. 

And was near nose to point with a hook. Reaching up he touched the chill metal, feeling it tug at the skin of his finger, a sort of grasping pinch never mind he wasn’t.. for better words… hooked. His breathe steamed the air and the hair on his arms pricked. Losing the touch, there was some resistance as the thing beyond it perhaps smelled blood and warmth and _wanted_ , John took one long step back and checked a shiver, drawing his robes about him, the man took comfort in the knife at his side as he stared at his death, the preferred death this mad thing had orchestrated for him to fall onto time and time again.

Below, something rattled, and then broke, it seemed his executioner was set to arrive any moment now. Heavy foot falls thudded, lingering on the stairwell, stopped once to slam down on a boxy barricade then all sound stopped save the trembling thunder under the whole of his skin that warned something was hunting him.

Holding his find close, he took one second, to stoop and gather some bit of sentimental fluff not disfigured, an apology of sorts for Strode perhaps, then he slid the window open and drawing from his runs in that haunted school and parkour all accidental, he swung himself down and out before this death could find him.

His slide down the pillar, fireman style, as the thing connected second story from first, was all accidental, the landing rough and at it’s end the killer glared down at him, waxen mask smeared in red, proof of someone else’s death perhaps.

Finds tucked under his arm, Kramer took to his heels, in a corner of his mind, all detached, he heard Jane’s words from earlier.

_“Some of these kids say it’s twenty twenty…”_

And there was a horror more poignant than the threat of inevitable hooking in that recollection.

Unable to do anything else, John Kramer ran, and this silent death followed.


	7. A return:  Whiplash

Meng swirled into existence, blinking and shaking her head like someone waking up from a dream, short cropped locks catching the light and gleaming. “Can someone please explain why the Shape was walking around with a freaking steak knife peg leg, because inquiring minds have got to know.”

It was an ominous start, a break in the normalcy, and once the clustered Survivors assured her they hadn’t been and had nothing to “spill” as they hadn’t been drawn… Well it came to waiting.

Slipping out of the mist, each step cautions, eyes darting, John appeared next, inquiring after “that tall young lady, the blonde one, Stride?”

Looking up from ribbing Meng about her Potter reference,

(“So says the pothead”,

“I only did it _once_ ”

“Promises promises..”)

Quentin turned from conflict, to John, and yawned. Jaws his to control again he flushed, then murmured. “Sorry, uh… and it’s Strode. And the mist got her. You know, you’re like sopping, right?”

With a nod John conveyed his thanks and settled in to watch the mist. Stepping back from the hubbub to wring at corners and the hood. His hair looked business end of a straggly mop, and while the others watched he pulled a frilly pink comb from his back pocket and scraped through it.

Ignoring the inquiring and jeers. And that John understood, it was a glitter speckled thing and likely to be regifted to Meg at first opportunity, still his scalp itched. It might have been the new hair coming in, sans dying and chemo it was a possibility that he hadn’t taken time to check as his cleaning had been hurried, he focused on the important things.

The mist was a curious thing, a border wall, sans solidarity and ever boiling. The edges twining like they were a fire meeting fire, meant to merge yet fragmenting under his regard. If he strained his eyes John could see shapes that inspired thoughts of where he’d been. Then motion, instinct, had him flick his wrist and for effort he got nothing. Still it was for the best. Motion and smear in the dark resolved itself into the silhouette with a familiar one-two slant to its walk and peculiar stiffness. Bill stepped out, swearing, fumbling his cigarette and lighter from his pocket as he walked.

“Yer’ a menace,” A familiar complaint that didn’t end with him pointing at Feng or Meg for once.

Around him wondering eyes scrolled from elderly military man to civilian, both were wet though Bill clearly looked victim of a sprinkler system where there was something of tameness to John’s saturation that screamed… to the incredulously gathered… that he’d somehow on this hell on earth, gotten a shower in.

“A clean one however.” His robes were wet, as was his hair. To the new curious gathering John shrugged, hunched into his robes. “One of the washing machines in a back yard worked.”

Quentin starts laughing, “Oh my god, really?”

And Meg lite up like it was Christmas “Which one?”

“Pro’ly changes places when the yards scramble.” Bill drawled, taking a draw from his cig and huffing the smoke at the mist, ever considerate towards his team mates and taking every opportunity to tell it to the entity. Make his mist eyes demon itch, get close enough and he’d take the damned things head. Coward it was it never showed itself for Bill to dig his cig’ in an eye before giving it a Tanks farewell, ah well. “Damned fool way t’ get caught. Liked yer trick wi’ th’ door though.”

In the back of the gathering, bulling his way forward, Jake came to the fore, turning first to Bill who was still smoking, to John who was shivering yet resolute on neither shucking off his robes or going to the fire.

“Seriously you look cold, just... I can call for you when the others get back.”

“Cold is a sensation, an unpleasant one….”

“And getting _a cold_ sucks.”

“And a risk I will court, actually, if you could…” Pulling a stuffy from under his robes, the thing a bit damp to put it mildly, he tossed the house shaped thing at Quinten, who caught it, bemused. “Please warm it up by the fire, I’ll be along shortly.”

King seemed to have picked the topic of his disbelief and rant in the making, ignoring Dwight at his side who was trying to dissuade him with a quick shake of his head, a mouthed “not our business”, the athlead opened his mouth, closed it, then after trying again, managed a strangled.

“You wasted time in a trial taking a bath-“

“-Shower.” John corrected. “The shower on the building to the left of Strode residence works.” He tabbed on, preempting the uppermost question from the young crowd. Wishing he’d thought to dig around a bit more for q-tips or even a wash towel, John scratched at an itchy ear.

“Not to sound judgy.” Kate drawled. “But didn’t that feel a little too American Psycho? Crazy guy with a knife and the shower and all that?”

Lips twitching, John shrugged.

“I.” Bill said with utmost dignity. “Have been draggin’ around Tank slime and Hunter goop for years, young miss, twenty years likely. So, Hell yes, I’m trippin’ the sprinklers and gettin’ a sossin’. And I’m hogging the damned hose out front a yard, and stripping, and scrubbing off all the goop. You can just turn your pretty eyes away when we go back to Haddon if you must.” Losing his heat, Bill turned to the red clad man, a bit hurt. “You could’a told me about the shower though, John.”

“I didn’t see you after I’d used it of I’d of risked it.”

“Ta. By and by, the beer tasted like horse piss.”

John blanched. “You drank it.”

“Well the first…” Bill huffed. “And the second, just to make sure it didn’t taste so bad. Moltov’ed the rest of it though.”

The others who’d clustered close and tipped their heads near as one, back and forth as the older men bantered, like fans of a tennis match enthralled by the ball, at the world Maltoved they broke into babble. Then Feng, clearing her throat, managed a dry. “For the rest of us sane peoples, _what the actually fuck_.”

Bill laughed, a deep belly laugh. “Yon John’s a sneaky bastard, coulda used sneaks like that in Zombie’ocolypse of 85.” Patting John hard, he headed to the fire, nudging past Jake, he tossed over his shoulder. “Damned good show that bit with the car door, he never saw it coming. I’mma gunna get a real drink, you know we got coffee in Hell, y’ wan’ some?”

John shook his head, then turned from mist from the triage of young, impulsive, females slowly creeping forwards, and in an irrelevant corner of his brain he heard old horror music, perhaps from Jaws.

“Now, ladies,” John slid one step back. Mind half inclined to risk mist than their eerie sequined pincer moment that was building.

“Min, Nea, I swear to God, leave the man alone. It’s his first day, second trail, ease up.” Dwight chimed in, clapping a hand over Meg’s wrist, words would not stop an enthused Meg for anything, and she was near vibrating with curiosity. Even as Kate, deciding she’d had enough, followed Bill, bemused. “Zombie what a what now?” drifting over to the lingering by the mist.

“Please let me know when the others get back.” Jane’s voice rose and she joined veteran and singer in a retreat meant to preserve sanity. A few minutes later she realized she probably should have dared the mist herself, because Bill’s chatter was if anything, blasé, nostalgic, and utterly horrifying as with his audience of “two prettys” he launched into one of more grissly tales, about two Witches, a Tank, and a steak out in the woman’s bathroom.

“Buut Daaad.” Meg didn’t mean anything about it, still Dwight flushed. 

“Not that old, Megara.”

With a gasp, she near swooned, her lips twisted into a smirk. “The betrayal, I’ll never tell you my real name again!”

Nea, lips quirking, allowing herself to be distracted a bit by the drama, drawled “I don’t think you can tell him your name twice.”

“Fine.” Meg huffed. “I lied, I’m not Meg, or Megara, and I’ll never tell you the truth now!”

To the young ladies cackling the mist stirred, and John more than thrilled to have a reason to tone her out watched and waited. About fifteen seconds later a black blob crept into existence, it solidified into a comprehensible shake, too many legs and a stoop to be one person, so it was with little surprise when Laurie staggered out of the mist, half supporting a woozy looking Claudette.

Following John’s gaze if not his lead, the large man looked from John, to the two, then swore. “Freakin’ hell, it usually only takes four of us at once.”

Loosing Meg, who sprinted up to the returning two, waving off mist that tried to twine about her like it was an irritating fly, she took Claudette’s other side, and supported by both women on either side they passed from a misty surreal path to the camp in a few moments.

“Quintin, we need a hand!” Dwight hollered towards the fire. Towards Jake, “You expect it to stay the same all the time, and it doesn’t, get over it David. The creepy space spider is not playing by some rulebook.”

Then he was gone, risking fringe and mist snakes to take Laurie’s place, and then Quintin was there, suitcase in hand, save when he opened it it wasn’t a mere suitcase. Straps had been set inside, bits of leather pinned to the case’s lining with needles, some actually taken from trees and threaded through. Vails and tubes baring tape strips with scribbly handwriting, besides those, tucked in a set of folded black fabric were syringes of… if not pristine cleanness, clean enough not to likely kill anyone outright. All this, John noted, as the younger man knelt on clearings edge, easing the case down and open. John swept off his sopping robes off, spread it before the boy after kicking something bramble and branch shaped to the side.

“My legs are just a bit numb… I’m not hurt…” Claudette groaned, face dark with flush even as she was carted to the impromptu bed.

“The Shape stabbed you in the back, three times,” Laurie snapped, having crossed the line between path and clearing she bent to catch her breath, twisted so she was facing Dwight and Quinten. “I had to pull her out by her hair, over the exit line, she went down on her stomach and he was just… He kicked me aside, was wearing his stupid steel boots and got me in a way I couldn’t get up… But he didn’t… he didn’t go after me. He was stabbing Claudette, and was smoldering, like he’d been in a fire or something,” And by the fire the others rose, coming forward, Jeff having drifted back from the clearings edge started at seeing the group and seeing him Bill hollered. “We got a man down!” and he was up and running. “And he wasn’t set up right to pin and stab but was getting there ... and we were right there so I… I just grabbed her hair and yanked… And I’m _so_ sorry Claudette, that must have hurt like hell...”

Sniffled. “I needed a new look anyways.” She was eased on her side, Dwight and Jeff shucking off shirts and jacket respectively to give her a bit of padding for her head.

“Umm so I’m gunna have to get a bit personal… Unless you want one of the girls to take a look…” Quintien dithered.

“I trust you.”

Rolling up her shirt Jeff easing her up so they wouldn’t have to cut it off, then easing her down, the gathered medics and curious started at her unbloodied back. Not to say it was unmarked. The flesh of her spine seemed darker than norm, and hot to touch.

“He used the steak knife?” John breathed, looking to Laurie, who nodded, looking sick.

“There was blood, I could see.. things… bones, spine stuff and he cut into her hip a bit… It was like he was trying to stab her in half.”

The bruising, which looked an odd near purple, save it glistened and pulsated, that marked a near complete crescent from side to tail cone attested that much, the unnaturalness of the wound… recalled him to healing, what little he’d spied of Dwight’s healing, as if something under her skin were shifting things about but doing a piss poor job in actually healing. As he watched it swelled, a slow slug like growth that made John bite back on bile.

Jeff, frowning, grabbed at a long span, as if to test its realness. It writhed under the gentle cupping of his palms and Claudette whimpered for it, her foot kicking.

“That’s not normal I take it?” John hissed.

“Rare.” Quinten countered. “So killer one –oh-one, except this shits like three-oh-one… There’s this thing called a hex, each killers got one and sometimes… if you don’t find the totem and knock it down the “curse” bleeds into the next trail. Or is triggered by a killer doing a kill sometime after you bump into the totem, or just finish a trial without dealing with it. Makes the dying really ugly and the Entity loves that. Usually, nine times out of ten, it fixes up after that. Still, it’s bad, she didn’t die when she was supposed to and so she’s dying here anyway because the Entity got cheated out of a tasty meal and he’s pissed for it. We’ve… last time they got sucked into a trial, sicker than hell and killed and they came back better but… numb, like a..” The boy gave the veteran a tired look. “Well I’d say “like a zombie”, but yeah… But they got better.”

“It took a month.” David grumbled.

“Yeah where you wanted to keep them from food, water, and tied to a tree because they couldn’t do anything “constructive” and they got night terrors that kept you up you fucking....”

“What did you do last time?” Jeff swallowed.

“We couldn’t, it was like ten minutes after they got back and it wasn’t doing this creepy… Ah shit I’m sorry Claudette…”

The girl nodded, sniffled then gasped as agony shot up and down her hip. The swell was tentatively carving a path down blood ways.

“It’s an abscess, right? We could drain it, antibiotic the shit out of it…” Jeff babbled. “I mean it’s an evil abscess, but it’s got to play by the rules of… of microbiology and crap, right?”

John, sliding a hand over the girl’s head, a damp span, hairless, but it was no mystery how that had happened. To his touch she tried to turn, to see, and better that she hadn’t as he pulled his knife with his dominant hand.

“Child, I need to ask something very cruel but in turn an utter necessity. This sickness won’t go away on its own and the mist…” The mist was still, its tops not twining, the lot as unmoving as stone. “To make you well, you will bleed, we do this to enrich your life, but there will be pain, and it must be done soon.” Any lower and he might risk her leg, he’d have to be damned careful not to cut too deep least she bleed out as well. “That or we can send you to the mist, hope you’re taken for a trial and killed… but you’ll be even sicker, near death for long after… In the end, it’s your choice.”

It was _always_ there choice, it was just that so few had ever seen it as such, understood their own agency. But here and now, _this child_ understood his truth where so many adult had not. She shivered, and looked at him, eyes clear, face lucid, she nodded.

“Good girl,” To the clearings medics, a boy perhaps younger than the patience and the burly Jeff he addressed. “Get what antibiotics do you have, also, sanitize this,” He tossed the knife at Jeff, who caught it and with a grimace took the lot to the fire. Shit, that told tales of their supplies, still he’d try. “I need water, towels, needles…… Warm those with the blade.” And Quintin was up and running to join Jeff. Looking sick herself Kate had taken one of Claudette’s hands, offering what comfort she could. “Alright, we’re going to have to pin you on your side, after we check to make sure this isn’t… growing in other places. Kate, can you help her get undressed?” The woman nodded and Nea was besides her already working shoes and the like off.

If it wasn’t, or rather if it was only going down from the last knife strike John could set up a line of hot needles to intercept the growth. Hot compress would set the lot to rise if it was playing anything like natures rules, once the board was set… He’d apply what incisions he must and they’d spend what time they needed draining this… illness… until it wore down.

Or Claudette bled out if he screwed up, or she was whisked to another trial and sacrificed thus speeding up the process of the infection, as it were. And while he might have wished there was a more natural, less personal way, of tending to this injury it would be in its way a blessing. He’d be able to, without resistance, test her resolve to hold to life. Simply lay the opportunity to persist despite hardship and let her blossom under so natural a trial.

“She’s…” Good would be pressing it, still Kate nodded. “Nothing new save a few inches down.”

Then the women were about her, burning her into her shirt and socks before moving her to the fire where a sad collection of shirts, shredded bits and ends and a few pairs of folded spare pants were set up. Picking his robes from the earthen floor of the clearing he shook the lot about, slung them on. Allowing those about the girl to shore her up, distraction, and chatter. Meg drew a laugh from the child as they set her as close as they could to their sole sterilization tool.

“We’re going to move you real close to the fire.” Dwight chimed in, taking the lead in the cheer brigade. Such molly coddling would have been wildly inappropriate if it weren’t for the child’s age, no older than eighteen at best, Cam’ had been that young then never any older after. Swallowing a lump in his throat, a blight he’d wrestled with whenever he thought of his deceased nephew, John wordlessly followed. “You’ll get best seat of the house and the best bedding.”

“Full five stars.” Ace chimed in, poker face in full attendance.

“If… ah if this goes… really bad and you get out without me…” That summoned a few heated rejoinders, but Claudette was a prudent thing if nothing else, and it was curious in that she thought of this as no others in any of his Tests ever had, save that one lying bitch who’d claimed to be with child and was obviously not. “Can someone, anyone… will they tell my folks? My ID is in my wallet with my address and everything… and in the flap, my Mom’s telephone number… And, oh God, I want Mom so bad right now… And Dad…”

They’d eased her down, with the bulkiest of the lot pinning her limbs, yet setting her on her side, legs slightly askew, as he watched them set up… well the lot swelled, hopefully not sinking in deeper as it did so.

“I know I’m not nothin’ like but how’s about I hold your hand little lady, I won’t let go till we’re out the other side.” So promised the gambler, while Quentin passed up first a clean pan that’d had the pins set aside, those must cool at least a bit and so the earth toasted mere inches while John set himself to kneeling before the child, he took the knife, its’ edge a hot blurry red. Pulling on an oven mitt Quentin scooped up the pins, and John gave him his orders, as well as a grim one to all about him. 

“If the mist comes the nearest take place for the disappeared. Whatever you do, you don’t stop, this spider spawn from hell isn’t interfering, am I clear?”

“And if she’s taken?” King asked, holding back, eyes thinned, weighing something, perhaps value and rations against this moment. 

“Then we take her back.” John snarled. Then, softening, smoothing his voice and slowing his cadence. “We’re starting now. You’re brave, and you’re good, and all will be well. This is pain, chemicals and compounds from a confused vessel. What’s wrong will be fixed, there is pain…” The needles sunk in a burning line and the thing under her surged up but stopped going forward. “And pain passes, changes, falls behind us. It’s a thing to be embraced, then discarded. Transitional. It’s the first step, and that’s hardest, but you’re doing so well…” Blade sliced lightly, and the thing from within rose, and it was not all fluid. There was something solid and twitching and besides him someone screamed, he sunk knife into its spine, then plucked it out with a practiced stroke earned more from years of deboning his meals than any in his less than... legal… teachings. “The first cuts the worse.” He assured, pointedly not responding to the babble about him he tossed the dead thing away and low so she’d have no chance to see it. Not that she’d see much beyond her tears and whimpers. “Quentin. Towels please, Dab and compress, after you pull the needles out, we’ll need to pen in the next… boil. “ Just toss them on the plate and put them in the fire.” Jeff chimed in, which made the boy unfreeze and do so. “Ms. Romero, run this over the flame until it’s safe to use again.”

Amusing how quickly Jane Romero took his bloody knife. There was nothing symbolic in the motion still John smiled despite himself. A glance down killed all mirth.

There were two more… twitching spans… Smaller than this, but if the thing burrowed and left trails of puss as this one had that the poor boy was left dabbing up and trying not to puke up… Well this would be a long Test indeed, for them all.

“Two thirds there.” He assured the girl softly. “You’re doing very well. A bit more courage and we will be done.”

A few of the others about him whimpered, shivered, but to them John did not offer any soothing. This was not their Game, this was between him, and Claudette.


	8. Kruegar 101

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Kruegar's mechanics are... broke I re hauled him for his own trials. Basically Quintin's going to be the tutorial for John... Feel for them both it's going to be a rough one.

He’d been allowed enough time to know he’d finished, then came the mist, and Quinten nodding past even as space and sensation failed him bit by bit.

“I’ve got this, God willing, she’ll be here when you get back.”

Then the mist which had been swirling around the edge of their campsite swelled and swept over them a soundless tide to elsewhere, never mind how he ardently did not want to go. Still, he did as he’d said, loosing his hold on knife and Claudette, the boy taking his place, likely throwing it aside and switching to bandaging and disinfection.

A wise goal considering in the matter of pain they were done with inflicting it for now. Time and this world’s hellish overseer would remedy that, but that moment was not now.

Another trail awaited him, and when the mist pealed back to show him the familiar play yard, skewed and blockish, his companion of the moment blinking besides him, wasting a precious moment swiping at his eyes and looking about.

“Alright…” Quintin breathed. “Jeff was…” confusion, a swallow, and forced brightening. “Jeff was getting close… so yeah, maybe we’ll both be pleasantly surprised when we get back to camp?”

Optimism twisted to delusion, felled to a questioning note. Sourly John glared at the boy, who had the grace to wince.

“Or we could just run to the nearest generator and get to work really fast and get back as soon as possible?”

To that more reasonable suggestion John nodded, “I’ve been here a lot… mind if I lead?” John shook his head, stilling his tongue least a caustic truth spill out. Because he was half a mind to throw the more odious members of this trail on hooks himself and take the hatch as a quick road out. If David was amongst their number than John might not have to say anything, he’d just do, and perhaps persuade the boy with his probable religious leanings that self-sacrifice was the higher road so that one of them get back and better be it the man with medial experience.

Which, speaking of… “Where’d you go to medical school? Because, seriously, I need to take my classes there…”

While flattered, and John did hold to his quiet a moment longer than he should, the playground’s sand crackling under his boots as boy lead man past sand lot was like gun shots. They past swings too clunky to swing, towards a custodian shed on the yard’s edge and a likely spot for a generator. It was shaped similar to the skin stealer’s chicken shed; still John did not point this out, focusing on the semi frivolous.

“I didn’t.”

“Wha?”

“My wife, Jill…” Lips curling into familiar bitter sweet patterns, John sighed. “She was doctor, working among the neediest of the needy. While I took a slew of classes to be supportive… Psychology, first aid, emergency aid… with a slant towards volunteering… I never went fully into the medical field. I’m an engineer at heart. My wife is very talented however and quite willing to give lessons and lectures to any aspiring, or nosy enough, to ask. And liked to read her texts aloud.”

They were at the door, it came open soundlessly.

“Alright, where’d she go, and she still offering lessons?”

And though the boy’s praise, and likely request for help, was utterly sincere, John laughed a soft huff. “I’ll ask, but the University of Chicago what where she graduated,” and though an old victory for her, his tone warmed in familiar pride. “Top of her classes.”

“Awesome, so not to be a total dork, but ready for Gen 101?”

It was haloed as had the other one been. The flooring a mix match of dirk and planking, the walls white washed inside, rusted bits of… plastic on sticks and metal on sticks alluded to sport equipment of a kind without being quite right. It was as if the idea of a hokey sticks and racket clubs were turn into wax and the lot set near flame before solidifying in to questionable facsimiles and set besides the generator.

Catching the slant of his regard if not the reason, Quentin chimed in, wistfully. “And the spider webs holding the lot shake like chains and are impossible to move around and the killer always hears it. Trust me, I tried. They look sorta like old timey lances. Get a running start, stab them in a ran by sort of thing….”

“Noted.” John mused, wondering if his taking of the knives had tipped the white masked killer to his location. He’d run some tests on that theory as time permitted. “And… I guess it is time I learn.”

“You built things, like houses and stuff, you’ll be kicking my butt in this no time.” The boy assured, nudging him to one side so he could watch both the door and him work all at once. Pulling aside a curiously loose metal plate, inside was a mess of tangled wired and bolts that needed screwing in.

“Alright, so when you first look at it, first impulse is right. Even if it doesn’t make sense in a science sense… Or even a lame hero movie no-no sense…”

“Like not crossing the red wire.” John whispered.

“Yeah, that. Sometimes you got to do that, so… um as stupid as this sounds you have to look at it a bit, blank your mind, and then just…” The boy’s hands snapped forward, fussing with bolts that’d need tools to remedy, wonder of wonders they spun under his fingers with ease. “So I took enough shop to know that’s not how to really do this… But we don’t get tools so… we get to cheat, but if you _can_ get tools they work stupid good…”

“Your hands would be skinned.” And fried, they danced about snapping sparking wires that the metal about it did not conduct, avoiding the sparks and twisting something deeper in that moved even deeper and Quintin was near up to his elbow in the thing. Save it was at an angle where his arm should have been on the floor, if the thing was hollowed, and yet it obviously wasn’t….

“Yeah, don’t think about that too much. You’ll get sick, like _puking_ sick. And if you don’t stop trying to do it real world like… It gets really bad. Poor Jeff was so sick first week we thought he had Ebola or something.”

Swallowing something bitter and thick, John nodded. Looked away, and curiously saw a shimmer, like a spot of smoke where it shouldn’t have been, for there was no fire.

“And done. You just click the lid back on, makes Killers kicking it not have so much ump and… And, oh fucking _hell_.”

And curiously on the breeze there was the hum of children’s voice’s. If he strained his ears John thought he caught the tone, a sing songed tally. Grabbing his arm, going from quietly calm to _vibrating_ in terror, the boy lead and John followed. They cut across the pal yard, the boy setting impossible swings to sing, and it hit something, the smear shimmered, sunk low than rose, and then John was running. Throwing everything into forwards, they pushed past revolving door more fitting a mall’s entrée, to white walls and cheery stripes running length wise. Entry way split to hall, and where John would have ran one way, and expected the boy to run another, as he’d seen other Survivor’s do so on his various pig-man trials, yet Quintin pulled him with him.

“Shit, sorry!” To John’s near staggering to fall. “No one stays alone in a Nightmare Trail! He can only take one of us at a time.” Huffing, the boy shoved on another barrier, and mall door misplaced spin, allowing them in. The room opened tall and wide with low squat tables running clamber-able paths, empty plastic plates atop them were patiently waiting eaters and by dust within them it’d been a long wait all told. Picking up one of the trays Quintin threw behind him and it cracked against the creeping… whatever it was. Smear had evolved into cloud, sans thunder, or any natural cause.

Skidding to a stop, more by not clearing the jump over the table, missing the step up from seating to table to get enough lift to sail over the table, John had slammed to a stop near center. He reached up and in, pushing on the seam between both parts and the cloud, near man shaped steel hissed against steel, was halted when the table it lunged over folded up soundlessly. Claws from something scraped and Quintin hauled him up and they were running, and behind metal tore and plastic was skinned.

“Kitchen’s got a generator; the noise should make him pull back!”

Swinging doors were met shoved side, and the kitchen was stereotype, save dark, which was countered by finding a switch and flicking it on. While John found yet another Frankenstein microwave oven, set upside down no less, there was a generator where a fridge would be. Pulling back the steal plate, an easy find, John considered wires and bolts, then Quentin, who was pushing up the nearest window.

“We got a few moments, get working, I’ll let you know when he gets in. Sunlight, noise, it makes him pull back, buys time until kills two of us, then everything stops working. Right now, this early, we got a little time. It’s like… you have to stay awake, doing stupid things to stay awake. Loud noise, lights, fresh air, being out instead of in. The longer you’re in the faster you go under.”

Trying to blank his mind wasn’t working, not with the child pacing about, watching the door, shaking with the intensity he’d seen failed Game pieces indulge before their known dying came for them.

“They aren’t all not men in masks. Kruegar isn’t, at least.”

Holding his questions John shoved his hands into the generator’s opening, hoping it’d be right, that he’d do this right.

He didn’t. But Quintin clapped him on the back, congratulating him on him making hell of a noise, might of got them a full minute there, and then they were bailing out the window, ground level, squashing some flower Jill would have recognized bit John did not. Then they were in a parking lot filled with abandoned cars, some with doors gaped open, some not, the whole strewn around like they were by the sight of a sudden pile up, save someone’d painted white lines on either side, making it a satire of a parking lot.

“Don’t think the Spider passed her driver’s ed, yet.” The child smirked, then hoping atop a car, ignoring the smokey thing in the window, that spat a curse loud enough to drown out its customary child’s song, before retreating. The room and it’s generator seemed bright enough and there was a temptation to try again, twiddled with and dismissed.

For John could hear, ever so soft, a breath of humming.

“Kruegar?” John wondered, turning away from the window and it’s toxic temptations.

“Dream demon, closest I can guess. He makes one of us fall asleep, and the other has to kill whoever is sleeping then themselves before he can pull them under. He’ll get one of us, and trust me, the six minutes after dying are the suckiest, but I swear, no matter what he says, it ends and you get back to camp, it’s just… long.”

Like a mute reprimand Quintin’s crucifix hung free, catching glints of light, near glowing before he ticked it under his shirt, and though a bit silly hopped from his car perch to another. Purposely loud.

“It’s… he won’t go after you… he likes… _younger people_ and,” and how it was said, the tones told tales, John clenched his hand, aching for his blade, but as always it wouldn’t come. “That’s why he went back in, there’s someone else inside. Spawning in a closet here, by yourself, sucks. Experience there. School trials… we team up, twos and prayers get us through, or at least only two of us dying ugly rather than the four _he’d_ like.”

“Experience.” John offered.

“The fucking worst, ever, man. So.. uh welcome to Kruger crash course 101 and God I’m sorry, it’s going to suck no matter what and there’s nothing I can do to make that better, and I’m so so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” John offered, and curious how such a simple truth made the boy wince. He kicked a door closed, since noise for now was the order of the day. Besides him, save a bit higher up, the boy stiffened. “Something up ahead?”

“Spotlight, other side, like the start of a sports field but cuts off. Still, I bet its’ a gen. Let’s go for it and see and.. I’ll tell you what I can while we go for it. We don’t need to run, yet, but if the sky goes grey… you _don’t stop running_. You _don’t let him catch you_ , you run ‘til you can kill yourself and hope he doesn’t find the body in six minutes…”

To such grim advice John nodded, kicked another door closed, and the boy took point, letting John follow, if not at a run, at a crisp enough pace to get them there fast wither interludes for warding ruckus as often as they dared.


	9. Kruegar 102, the last generators

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I named Kramer's nephew Cameron, for the name of the actor that played him, Cam' is an affectionate short hand for it.
> 
> I think I mentioned that this is a Jigsaw AU heres where some of that's shown.
> 
> I also used psalm 23 I think, well Q uses it. Hopefully I used it correctly in the right context.
> 
> Flashback centrist but a justified one I hope. 
> 
> Enjoy.

“So I’m going to sound like an ass.” Quentin warned, watching John tinkered with another gen. Their hypothesis had born fruit and after wading through a car wreck melded with a parking lot the boy had tried doors, noting the cars that had their logos legible (if wrong, the writing wasn’t right, their edges were unblurred, so here and now that was close enough) would open. He was half in half out, and finding the radio was working and the keys inside the ignition. The car would not turn on but the radio kicked to life, he found a rock station and jacked the volume up obscenely loud… “And I should have asked music preferences, huh?”

“I’ll live.” John drawled. “If that’s it-“

“Do you have kids?” To John’s start of shock, because God the thoughtlessness of that statement, the young man swallowed. “Or think of someone as your kid?”

“And how is that your business?” And in tone and stare John warned, this was a delicate matter and to those warnings the boy flinched.

“Because.. Kruegar, he’ll use that… If he gets you… And if you’ve loved anyone, ever, especially if it’s a kid. He gets you like that. He makes you hear them, makes you turn around to follow their voice… Lures you to be by yourself and he can look like them. He can mimic anyone and anything with his voice, in his nightmare he can make you see them. Get you to lower your guard. And when we go back in…” Because this is one and there were four others assuming the killer did not gain solidarity and decided to trash this one beyond use. “He’s going to do that… and it’s going to look harmless…”

Turning a knob, back and forth, John tightened it and shook the shocks that ran up and down his arms out. Rubbing his wrist he staggered up to standing.

“If you could explain in a more coherent manner, without the dramatic pauses?” John drawled.

About them thrummed a song John thought he might have recalled. A clashing loud cacophony that was beyond the span of classic rock that he’d favored, but then head banging metal wasn’t his favored genre. Considering his late life circumstances he _really_ wasn’t a fan. Hoffman’s favoring it, particularly of the scream based off shoot, had set John’s headaches to hellish levels, and the man had aped compassion of a sorts after his Game, toning down the volume when he became “aware” of John’s presence, but it happened with enough frequency that the older man had had his suspicions. Still, he’d had other things to cover see, one man’s bad taste in music was very low on John’s priorities, living yet one more day had been prominent, getting his life work to completion, as far as he could take it so others could take it up…

“He’s a shape shiftier. And anything and everything you love, every thought you’ve held of them, he can get to that somehow, and he uses it. To lure you away. That’s one of the reasons we stay in pairs. To pull each other back. And he makes you… slow down… You dwell on things you shouldn’t, even when you’re awake. But when you’re asleep it’s a hundred times worse because reality… twists to _what he_ wants.”

Thinking of his… living and dead, those who he loved and lived for never mind he was dying… It wasn’t a multitude, but those ties were strong enough that if evoked could be a distraction.

Still… for now… “Most of mine are dead.”

“He killed one of mine…. My best friend and… sometimes He still gets me to follow their voice. So if I start calling out, to Nancy or.. well anyone who isn’t from the camp. If you could shake me, yell in my ear, stuff like that? I wasn’t super specific last time and I got punched by Feng and that sucked, I mean we lived, but two black eyes were bad.”

Grimacing in distaste John nodded.

“Yelling and shaking, but don’t grab my arm, shake me about the shoulders please, if I’m unresponsive.”

“Cool.” The boy breathed. “And thanks, for listening and believing me.”

XXX

The short chairs and art cluttered the edges of the halls on their return. A proliferation that Quintin did not even glance at. The art, stick figures and crude turkey hand drawings, were familiar and expected… And thus easily looked over, once a cursory glance over was done to slate John’s curiosity.

Adding more fuel to the fire, and confirmation of the boy’s stories, the names, particularly the initials, had spelled out various morbid things. The first being the grouping of _Henry Edwards, Linderman, Phillip_ , and _Marge Eyon_. The others _Theodore Histon, Isaac, Samantha Wayward, Allen Yale_ , were noted, and pointedly ignored.

Still each step was a trail, he heard and felt old conversations even as the boy hung close chattered at him, made him respond to him in the here and now, but there was an undertow of recollection, and there was no humming to warn it was being directed.

 _They’d met in park, so different than the pay yards back and below_. There was a stair well now, they took class room doors, pulling one open, then the other. There was a wry charm to the shortness of the furniture. He’d only been in this type of building a few times, twice as Cam’s show and tell a childhood ago, and once as am educational speaker where he’d had to explain again and again what his job was and what it wasn’t. No, he didn’t build rules about what civil meant, he’d heard that one so many times that one meeting

And he couldn’t recall the ultimatum about “never again” he’d given his supervisor at the time, but it’d been heated and…

And they pushed open a closet, nestled between two classes, never mind they were normally built at the end of halls or besides bathroom’s …

-he’d yet to see one of those, however, and that realization recalled him that certain biological necessities hadn’t cropped up yet, and that was mildly worrying as a spouse of a doctor he knew that while disgusting it was one of life’s processes. He’d have to talk to another survivor about that… one of the older ones.-

And within was another generator.

Shaking Quintin, the boy snapped to fully awake, he’d been leaning on John staring blankly at their find, his quiet monologue drying up in bits and pieces as they drew closer, with a start the boy came too, and groaned.

“I freaking _hate_ Nightmare trials. Keep watch I need to do something… active I guess… God I’m gunna get shocked. We’ll hit a window next, some sun will push this back a bit.”

John nodded and took post besides the wall, letting his gaze scroll left and right, the other doors about them had been tried a few in each direction, but not all. The ones on the edges had not. And the tableau had been the same, short desks, windows, some with bricked off spans as the “view” and how that was done on the second story. Well looking out the other windows towards the walled in ones weren’t helpful, as the walls were literally not visible from the outside. He’d of noticed the ominous building choices his first visit here, otherwise.

Insanely sunlight got through, seeping through the cracks in wild zig zag patterns nothing like how it should have had there been gaps in the mortar.

As clear as if it were yesterday, never mind it’d been years and years ago…

_“It wasn’t fair. For you. I mean, you lost out on being a Dad. But I lost out in being an older cos’.”_

_There’d been children playing on the swings before them. Juggling drinks in his hands, seeing his Uncle without he’d hollered, “I’ll be back” before running off then back again. He was bundled briskly wearing his middle schools paraphernalia in the fuzziest, fluffiest, slant order able. It’d been akin to sitting next to an animate dust bunny, but then the school colors had been grey and brown and with that style worn it was somewhat an unavoidable comparison. Taking his drink, mainly to get Cameron to stop twiddling with it, John sighed, scooting aside on the weather warped bench (another sign of the budget cuts, he was definitely putting in some calls when he felt up to it.). “I am so sorry I never even thought of that…”_

_“Honestly I’m more mad that they hid it from me to put off “the talk” than anything.” The adolescent grumbled. “Just.. they… Mom and Dad said you were feeling down… or angry about the divorce and..._

_And that was a topic John did not want to peruse. So he evaded with a quiet, “How did you find me?”_

_“Well after canvasing the bars around your work and house…”_

_He’d tried to time it so John was drinking; good thing the older man was smart to that trick and knew only to take small sips when the young man was smirking like that. Still he strangled a bit on his response. “You did not-“_

_“-For your car” It was sing songed no less, and snickered after. John considered a scathing acid slicked observation, perhaps about one of the ladies with her faux fur watching the children to get revenge, something so cutting the occasionally callous young man would laugh, but Cam’ was smart. He took small sips, a trick needed to not die of dehydration during the Kramer/Tuck household family meals, which often devolved into snark fests that the youngest were encouraged to join in and learn from their elders. Political debates were open season and the last one Cam’ had done rather well for himself. “Honestly, I started looking for secluded places after that, semi safe ones because…. Well I’m not stupid. And I’ve only been doing this during the day. When those were a bust I came out here ‘cuz I remembered the lemonade and popcorn stand and it’s just luck I saw you. Didn’t figure you’d go to a kiddie park. All things considered.”_

_They sat in companionable silence and John smiled the first time in… well it’d likely been a month. A tired absent smile for Jill over some meeting or other between work and marriage counselors… He dared fingers to scrape a hand over the boy’s head, a coagulation of hair, ear muffs bind, and scarf hitched way too high._

_“God Uncle, I_ just _styled that.”_

_“You’re inflicting bed head on yourself without the bed.” John drawled. His hands were near glossy, how much stuff had the boy used? More worrying what was the chemical composition, some brands caused the hair to dry out and snap off in colder climates when over applied and while not below freezing winter was well on its way and…_

_“You’re doing the “over worry thing” again, seriously, stop, my head, my business…”_

_“Which my hand came into contact with, young man. I’m just wondering how many fingers I’m going to lose for the contact.” Idly John slid his fingers over his pant legs, the lot glopped into unappealing lint speckled semi translucent morass._

“John, hey John, snap out of it. You’re looking down the hall for Kruegar, remember?” Funny. Cam’ had not said that, or anything vaguely like that. There’d been no hall; they’d been outside and… And the world shook; he was shook, warm hands, living hands. He came too looking into Quintin’s worried eyes, two hands clapped down on his shoulders. It felt odd to feel himself smiling though he didn’t recall doing so, much less so widely. He blinked, lethargy making each one a danger, and yawned _._ “I just wrapped up, how long were you... out?”

Behind them, steps away something clattered and clicked. So much for learning by observation. He grimaced at the lost opportunity and the boy let him go with a murmured “sorry”.

It was curious how the younger generation was about apologies. Quick to offer over every little thing, to offer unnecessarily, at least amongst the kindest of the lot, it was a perverse barometer really irritation verses kindness.

“My mind,” John explained as means of apology. “Has been my stronghold, my blade, it’s.. unpleasant to have it pitted against me again.” Then, because the boy was so young, and his generation had failed them in many ways, specifically in the language of apologies in etiquette, he added. “You did nothing wrong. Thank you for bringing me back”

The same he should have said to Cam’, but he hadn’t… and life moved on until it hadn’t.

“Well Nightmare trials…”

Suck.” John finished, agreeing almost wholeheartedly, and the boy smiled, started and startled in such a tame way at such a little thing. “Really young man, just because my hair’s white and I’ve a passing resemblance to Gandalf does not immediate nominate me for sainthood.”

“You totally are _not_ a Gandalf.” Clicking the generator’s door closed, Quintin started to walk off. But John dared a short walk around to gather a chair and brace their worked upon door shut. Well two set atop each other because they were _that_ small. He pulled more chairs against other doors that had flawed windows to throw any killers off and make it a bit of a guessing game as well as dissuade any survivors that were about. And cottoning on Quintin joined in, while looking around and about like a startled hare as he worked. “Ok. Maybe a clean shaven slightly younger Dumbledore.” The boy offered brightly, last chair set in place, they’d set a barricade on each door three out in both directions.

“You mean that Slytherin parading as a Lion, don’t be insulting.” Said boy’s elder countered, there were a few doors doing back and a stairwell going down at the end, they went towards that. Popping open doors, discerning it was a classroom, the window bricked, and closing the door behind them to muddle the trail a bit. “That dubious old goats worse than Voldemort, you’d think his older brother would have sense to be a sheep heard so he’d see less family resemblance when he cleans out the pens...”

“Holy shit, you know… that’s like… a declaration of war on the internet, right? Like _so many people_ would just lose their shit at you? Like Meg would lose her ever loving _mind_ …”

“Over those books?” John blinked. “But… if it’s twenty twenty… I just finished them when they got out and it was the last book I listened too right before… “ _I died_ would be a bit morbid, he’d been simply drowning on air, his body unable to properly process the air about it per it’s… decline. He could still hear Hoffman’s mocking laughter, even over the recalled gasps as his body failed him. He’d used his last moments to reach for the oxygen mask that was put tantalizingly beyond his reached… He’d had a choice then, breathing or revenge, and when his hand fell short of the mask in that last moment, well he’d had a second longer than Mark had suspected. He’d reached under it, toward the button Hoffman hadn’t known about. The report of gun fire as a trap had been tripped had been his last recalled sensation, the lack of pain, save his lung burning and exhaustion, had offered a small hope that it’d hit the right target, but he wasn’t sure… He’d never be sure until he returned. John drew his robes about him, shaking off that recollection easily enough. Which was ominous in it’s own way. “I heard the last audio book, the seventh book in oh five…”

“It’s still big, like _really_ big. There’s been a few other book series that did good but Potter’s a classic.”

“So Meg is a Dumbledore fan?”

“And potter nerd, and like _Gryfindor all the way, best house ever_. Seriously, no love for Hufflepuff.”

“Ah…” John hummed. Bemused that an old ice breaker in his volunteer days was still valid near fifteen years late never mind the boy was well beyond the “target” audience of the books. While he’d not protested their inclusion in the IC children recovery library when asked during a heated meaning, but he’d suggested the nurses and psychologists read the texts to their recovering patience’s with their contents in mind. Specifically anything set post Azkaban. Though the more religious and abused of their lot had had different stipulations from the first book on up and that’d been a fight between directors and educators and psychologists that he’d been glad to bow out of. 

Jill had over salted his foot for a week after he’d thrown her under the bus with that one pastor and it’d been somewhat justified so he hadn’t complained… until one hurried breakfast when he’d found the cereal salted.

“So you’re...” He left it hanging and like many children before him Quentin puffed a bit in pride with his imaginary house.

“Badgers are the best.” Quentin smirked. “Let me guess, Ravenclaw?”

The last was said to another closet, sans generator, with spider web bound bristle sticks trying to be brooms.

“A good guess.” John congratulated. Neither confirming or denying. His closet had born him a water fountain, perhaps inspired by his thoughts of salt, twiddling the press button had shown made it hum, like that damn microwave abomination from below. “Nothing.”

“Last one, it’s got a regular window, wanna open it or just head down?”

The boy’s gigantic yawn post question seemed answer enough and John nudged in, closing the door behind him to muddy what trail he could and pulled the window open. There no gimmicks in the normal process, a blessing, and a glance down showed the view to be the willy nilly parked parking lot though their path had set them going away from it and the altitude of her perch was too high…. Quentin perched in the teacher’s desk, lying back, then grimacing and pointed. To the motion John looked up from contemplating the fire escape a window over that went up, followed the boys arm and digit and… adorning the rotating fan that was off (a mercy considering it’s sprawl of spider webs about it) was a hook. It was as if someone had popped in, declared the room not morbid enough, and put a pristine spine of onyx in the center of the plastic base for the fan blades.

All the “child’s art” was red “hand turkeys. And they were filled in, and the names spelled out “YOURE NEXT” the X name always being Xavier. It was both amusing and horrifying to be surrounded by such.

“That one… that one’s a royal fucker to die on.” Quentin grumbled. “When it’s on you get gross stuff in you, and you jerk a bit because the thing turns on so the thing digs in and… It’s just, ung…” The boy threw his hands over his face, rubbing at his eyes. “And I’m whining.”

Justifiably.

“Quentin, get up and get some sunlight, you need to shake off your malaise.”

While not quite an energy drinks worth of awakening it’d helped significantly when John had done so earlier. Even stepping away a bit made things precarious.. which coupled with the new “art “ was alarming. Still this moment was peaceful enough and they’d need it.

“Wha?” The boy was sitting up, swinging legs over the desks side, something small clattered and the boy was up and at least staggering towards John in a straight line. 

“Come on, poke your head out, then when you’re thinking clearer sink down a bit and get your upper torso and one leg over. I’ll brace you so you can safely sit on the sill for a bit.”

With the hesitance of the half asleep the boy mumbled. “Alright.” It took two minutes, perhaps three, and the slackness to the child faded and he came back.. well not to life, but coherence. When he clamored in John took his place, not climbing out, but hanging out, looking like a sick red cardinal perched on the sill no doubt. Despite not needing support the boy set his arm over his shoulders, a touching gesture meant to escalate into a grab and pull back if he tipped over he supposed… His arms and back ached, making him bitterly resent his age and this damned school’s eerie properties that made the whole trial a mix match of Lovecraft’s alien geometries and the bastardized love child of many monsters born in Steven King’s head.

_One two three…_

The damned humming, distant but drawing near made John groan a profanity and pushed off the frame to get to standing. Claws twinkled from a window a floor up, as something, a smear vaguely man shaped, waved down at him. Blood dripped, catching the edge of his nose and trailing down. He smeared the lot with his sleeve even as he backed up.

A quick glance up affirmed the sky was blue.

More than awake, if felling like crap, John shook his head. “He’s right above us.”

Looking at the bloody line the boy nodded swallowed.

“Freakin’ figures.”

“The stairs going down…”

“Hopefully leads out again, but if not… The basement will have two gens… but basements, ‘specailly his… He’ll know. Nightmare trials hide the gates until all the generators are on, then you just know… But they stay locked for six minutes, and He knows too.”

“Grab two chairs, we’ll trap the stairs behind us, set them at odd angles and hope he trips.” John decided, a quick poke through the desk found one of the drawers filled with large tubes of glitter. Daring a peak over Johns shoulder the boy snorted. “Now I know where Feng gets it from. She glitters last place when she’s in a mood.”

Taking two of the top bottled he clicked the thing closed, and the door the boy’d left open on leaving as well.

XXX

Each step down was like a blow to the heart, a grinding of fragments, he could hear the glass under each boot fall.

 _Another day, another visit to the child’s park sometime after three pm. He’d tailored the motions of his grief so his nephew wouldn’t skip class, an absent after thought that’d earned him a wry greeting of “couldn’t he be more considerate,” never mind he already_ was _. Chin in hands, elbows on knees, an unhealthy slump was his whole posture, he couldn’t even recall the last time he blinked, only that his eyes burned. One of the more catty parents was giving him a skeptical look. The scent of pretzels and mustard made him flick his eyes to the off colored blur of his Nephew settling in, still in school garb, and clearly winded despite detouring to get food from a stall and… By the slosh and bitter smell, more lemonade._

_“So how often had the babysitter club called the cops on you, Uncle Kramer?”_

_“Cam’” John was weary and exasperated beyond words. “ And considering the packs little alpha just pocketed her cell phone you saved me this time.”_

_“This time?”_

_Ignoring the teasing lit John sighed. “I am sorry. That things went so wrong you never get that opportunity, first time, or again”._

_A slurp, and John irritated with being poked with the cup took the offering, transferring his gaze from the playing children to the drink. There was orange blob of something in the center that was distantly alarming even in his numb state. “Extra C, you old people don’t do so good sick.”_

_“No one does.” John swirled the straw inside, mixing the lot up so he’d not have to see the blur of.. highly suspect orange byproduct._

_Ice rattled, as Cameron risked brain freeze to indulge his humming bird metabolism. “God Uncle Kramer, are you gunna apologize for the sun’s brightness next? What’s happening between you and Aunt Jill is adult. Sucks, yes, but not_ on _anyone. I’ve known about three months by the way. And I know the dates…”_

_“Tomorrow, five forty nine pm.”_

_“I was gunna say_ soon _.” The words were breathed like a wound realized. With a hiss no less. Ice rattled as straw was stirred again and again with minimal liquid in this temperature thawing would be sluggish at best. Courage found, Cam’ continued. “Look, this isn’t to guilt you… But we were studying religions and something got me thinking…”_

_John raised an eyebrow, not quite rising out of his stoop but turning a bit slow to regard the boy._

_Fighting down a flush, because it was Uncle K, he’d never hurt anyone, and the comparison in his head between the slow drawn regard and that slasher flick was a bit… alarming. Way to go sucky subliminal thought and sub con, way to freak out someone.. Looking away to study slushy sidewalks, the young man tried. “I know you read a lot… but ancestor worship ring a bell?”_

_“Pitru Paksha, Dia de Muertos, it’s not so common in the states, but elsewhere…”_

_“Yeah so I’m maybe way over the line here, and you can tell me no, but…”_

_“Cam’,” the boy stopped flailing, near literally with straw attachment no less. Kramer stiffened a bit, mimed normal posture a little. “I may not agree with you but I won’t hate you for what you say.”_

_“Promise?”_

_Resolving to talk to his brother in law at length, because Cam’ should not have sounded so beaten down, there was more than “he knew” and “them avoiding the talk” going on. John cleared his throat, pushing back a tight pain in his heart,_

_“I promise.”_

_“Do you think about how screwed over Gideon got? He missed the Lion King and and crap…Would it be bad to do that stuff, with the idea of… of telling him… after? Would you mind if… if I did that?”_

_“Cam’ what you do…”_

_“I_ know that _I just… I don’t wanna do it_ alone, _alright! I want to go with someone to talk about it and I_ told _Mom and Dad, because they were worried I was looking at kiddie things that_ I’m too old for _, and_ I’m grounded _, for another week and a half! I’m not supposed to be here! And Aunt Jill cried at me and said the same thing you were gunna and but she basically told me to get out right after…”_

 _“I… I won’t speak for your parents…” One a near dead beat the other with a tentative grasp on reality and a strong belief in “free roaming is best” in a city where such could be considered madness if not cause for investigation. Jill and John had been points of stability, hearing of things from the boy long before his parent thought to ask. Cam’ must have been upset beyond telling to go to them first, and scared beyond reason to wait three months to reach out to them. “But I_ will _speak to Jill. She loves you dearly, but she’s horribly volatile this time of year, perhaps later she’ll be amiable. But how she tends her grief… is different than how I do.”_

_“You were being a freaking Zombie, Uncle K, until just right now… And… it’s scaring me.”_

_Licking his lips John swallowed._

_“I’ll do better, try to do better, but Cam’ this is.. universal, not just adult. People grieve, and it can get ugly.”_

_“I’ve been watching, two days before I went up to you. You didn’t even notice.”_

_Thoughts devolving into subdued cycle of profanities, John couldn’t think of a dammed thing to say that was coherent much less helpful._

_Finally his mouth opened and what tumbled out was a truth, helpful or otherwise._

_“It’s… our legal representative informed us that Jill’s main assailant got out, years early. Her partner paid a fine and ratted out some other criminal activity and his sentence was reduced, from years to weeks, it lead to the police rounding up someone… more important than a petty theft and... He’s getting out first, tomorrow. She’s got a reduction in time and that could go lower if she behaves. So,” John breathed taking up the orange topped abomination, a sip found it atrocious, still he endured the taste, it was something to focus on. “If your Aunt and I seem a bit.. off… well now you know why.”_

_“What the actually fuck.” Though soft the outrage made the boy tremble._

_“I’ve got a noise complaint now, on my file. Then Jill racked up one. Because instead of letting me tell her they called her while I was at my work scheduling time off. I suspect our HOA will be billing us exuberantly for it.”_

_“Fucking Kramer luck, Uncle K. Stop kicking black cats, and breaking mirror, seriously, I will make nerf ones of both that squeak. Hand to God.”_

_John snorted. “That’s not why you’re in workshop young man… but the thought is… appreciated.”_

The window and been broken, a thief breaking it to get to the door handle to better shove the lot open, because in that last sane moment Jill had locked it. The thief had never suspected that a pregnant woman was mere inches away from his labor had frozen in terror. Each step down to the basement had sounded like the steps across the blown out glass. The ground at its base had a different tenor. The crack of gravel against boot.

They’d set white stone about the edges of Cam’s grave, talks of setting a cement base to hold it to deaden the sound, give it a mosaic property hadn’t been resolved. Because Cam’ had had sensitive ears, he’d of hated the ruckus, and John had told them that. Furious that he’d _had_ to do so. But the suggestion of an estranged man, based off of a recitation of a fact that they should have known, well spite and finances had left things unsealed. And John’s efforts to just do it himself, he had a freaking construction company, contacts, contracts, had been shot down. 

Threats of lawsuits, ligation, had stilled him, that and a specific diagnosis that Jill’s brother had threatened to use as leverage that he was not in his right mind if he did not stop.

He was dying, and Cam’ was dead, and didn’t he have better things do to anyway?

He’d died before he could usher either of those ingrates into a Game, it was one of his regrets that… Well it did not _haunt_ him. Rather _he hoped_. That his other apprentices had found his notes and acted accordingly, he did not need to oversee what they needed to learn.

He’d learned his lessons long ago, and if they did, well and good.

And if they did not then their bodies would be found at the meat pack under the carrion of pigs, hopefully before processing.

Besides him, whispering a prayer, Quentin crossed himself, then pulled off the metal span that kept him from his labor, besides him John did much the same, sans religious motions.

“Once this is done.” The boy’d warned, barring him first step so he must hear. “We’re going to be shunted into a Dream, and we can’t wake up, we’ve got six minutes to find the gates once the last gen powers on.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then one of the gens we fixed breaks, and we have to fix it to try again, except there’s no... Cloud stage. Kruegar will be real, and if he sees you, you fall asleep, and he kills you. You get a different type of six minutes then.”

“Done.” John breathes, setting steel in place and standing up, stepping back. Quentin, crying, crossed the last wires and the chug attests to completion, as does the birth of embers without fire, and the coiling dance of smoke that one does not breathe but only sees. He takes John’s hand, staggers to standing, whispering, other hand clasping his crucifix.

 _“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the **valley** of the shadow of **death** , I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me_”

There is a bed in the corner, a mess of pipes and a bed deeper down, a subbasement, he’s noted it and noticed how Quinten had pointedly _not_ looked at it, glanced than looked away. And he nearly asked, but the prayer in its shaking voice, the tears.

John will not, not now.

Nor will he ask why he can hear Cam’s voice as it hadn’t been , from years and years ago, from behind that bend of hot steaming pipes, centered on where that bed is. Whimpering, with tears to it’s tenor.

It’s not real. Cam’ had died a young man, the voice behind him is too young.

But recalling it as Cam’s voice, even as he pulled this young man with him, up past the stairs that crackle and shatter under each foot fall, it is hard. Hellishly hard. 


	10. Interlude, after a nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Kruegar's a warning in and of himself. Chapters and scenes like his basically explain why this fics an M ranking.
> 
> Trigger warning for torture, psychological and otherwise, and while I'm not horridly graphic... it's bad at it's best adn gets worse for a bit. The warnings for Kruegar's perversions are in full effect and though not shown are strongly alluded to. If anyone wants a summery instead of reading the lot drop me a line.

Nightmare trails, were something to recover from in the silences of one’s own mind. Live or die, seen or not, there was something so inherently evil about that creature bound to the Entity that it left scars even from the most casual contact. Walking the halls of it’s home picked open old wounds, and the allusions of it’s personal chambers were unpleasant, to put it mildly.

Ace had greeted him once he appeared. Cut him off from staggering back in to the main clearing, the mist so close his back felt slimmed by the almost contact. It wasn’t much, an arm cut across his chest, caught between the man and a tree. He could walk around, but John stopped, let his gaze slowly scroll up, and waited.

“Quen’s been back a few… But he won’t talk. He was looking for someone, before Claudette’s whimpering got him to fuckin’ stop and sit down. And Feng and Nea’ve been back a long while so it wasn’t them. Kruegar got them fast and separate and made it slow. Bastard got them solo and did… what he does to kids.” A huff, the man turned aside and spat at the ground, a growl of utter hate in his tone. “I doubt you care, but Kate’s with them now, so’s Jane. And just so you know, just in cast Quen’ didn’t get a chance to tell you… They’re a ways away so they can cry and scream and do what they need to do without anyone judging. And you _don’t touch them_ or _get near them_ , and for the love of God you _do not hum near them_.”

John nodded his understanding, and then slumped weakly against the tree, looking at Ace’s weathered face, the near algae like bristles that served as facial hair, the miasma of smoke and smokes about the man. 

“So… I gotta ask…. You make it over the finish line a little apart or did the fucker get you and break habit and kill him first? Because Kruegar, he normally save Quen’ for last and it’s an hour before he comes after the second to last, usually.”

“You’re real?” John breathed.

Pulling off his glasses, face twitching into a grimace, the younger man winced. “Fuck, that type of trial? Look, you’re new and you need to know. The youngest are gunna be like “how are you?” and “how was it?” and you… you just _don’t_. It’s a sorta rule. If you need to talk about it, it’s here and now. I’ve seen shit and can deal. Some of the younger…. They can’t and the offers open right now and then it’s gone. Comprende?”

The smells were too real, the staleness to the man, and after straining his ears against the thundering of his heart he heard no humming. The humming had been universal, and not hearing it… Well it wasn’t hope but desperation that made him talk.

“I’ve “made it out” twice. Once to everyone gutted by that damned things claws, the second to…. He had my nephew, he’d pulled him from the wreck of a car crash and cut my leg’s tendons, he hauled me up and fucking crucified me on my own hospital bed and _made me watch while he_ …” John nearly bent over, puked, just recalling. The mask had been slapped over his face, oxygen exchanged for some corrosive something. … and he’d been drowning until he’d twisted his wrist and summoned his blade. He’d cut he binds, and himself in a mad attempt to escape and face a ruin he’d clawed off the sucker attached to it because mask had become some sort of leach because that’s how dreams worked.. And he was dreaming… And the words were coming out in a rush like a spat of vomit and he couldn’t stop, _he should_ but _he couldn’t_ … “Then he skinned him alive.” John hissed. Outrage and pain making him shake. His hands shook his left near spasomed. He’d drawn his blade in that dream, crawled on bent elbows and hands, face a ruin, breathing an agony, blade drawn, first to give Cam’ the only mercy he could, then though futile try to gut the bastard who dared do such to even a simulacra of Cam’.

The mocking and patronizing had done little to veil the fury of a kill denied. Because John’d thrown Quentin over the gate before Kruegar could crash it closed. The boy’d been sliced open but on the other side he’d healed and the mist had swept him out of John’s view and it’d been him and that burnt crisp of a man whom John would hold under the fires of hell itself if need be…

And the punishments for pleasure denied had begun.

 _“Close your eyes and I’ll cut your eyelids out.”_ So breathed Kruegar, perhaps further enflamed that he’d not, flinched back or scrunched his eyes back. For him, death and pain were familiar acquaintances. He’d been confident he could tolerate the more base venting Kruegar indulged, and his endurance had inspired the demon to slash his throat and the dreaming after...

He’d been under one of Hells finest stewards that day, a true master of torment, and he’d fucking find a way to return pain for pain in due time.

Blowing a low note, Ace winced. “That type of trial, fuck. I’d offer booze but the only stuff you found tastes like horse piss and I don’t wanna fist fight the Shape for it. But, tell you what, if I get lucky, first ones on the house.”

“I don’t drink.” The confession felt wooden yet habit made him speak it. He’d had two glasses of alcohol in his life, his first at his father’s funeral, then one at his wedding, and never saw much allure in the stuff.

“Then the first joint, the first line of coke I bump into, there’s weird shit in these trials, you have a poison and I’ll let you take first shot, no questions asked.”

“Napalm, I want enough to fucking bomb that school and the hell spawn in it. I want it all to burn.”

“More than fair,” Settling his glasses in place, the man leaned back, hands in his pockets. “First I see I’ll let you know. Just let one of the more nerdy ones explain to me what it is in easy terms and it’s yours if I find it.” Promise made, the man loosed his grip on the tree, stepped back. “Kate’s… never… neither had Jane or Claudette… About half of us, never. But those who have been, we’re a special type of fucked up. Welcome to the club.” Then tone gentling, incredible as it was considering what he had to say, Ace continued. “Now, suck it up and don’t let any of the kids hear you bitching about it. There are nightmares enough and… well Quen’ said, once long ago…. The reason he don’t talk about where he’s been is he was tangled up with that fucked up gremlin road rash, and talking about it… It gives the bastard a spring board to get here. To get to the kid and to _all the kids_. For reals. So for everyone’s fucking sanity you don’t breathe a word of this past the mist line, alright?”

“I’ll settle for a shot gun and silver to coat the bullets.” John countered.

“I’ll gift you that napalm, fucker more than deserves to be burnt to a crisp twice. We get out of here and I’m giving Quen’s dad half my spoils… He’s the bastard with the balls that killed Nightmare the first time, granted, had it been my kid, I’d of done more than burned the bastard. “

Footsteps, Ace twisted back, slapped a smile on and raised his voice. “Heeey… Meg, sweatie, just frisking ol’ John for money, you know how it goes. What’re you kids calling it now, thug life? Anyway how’s life?”

“I’m,” puffing her chest out, near bouncing in self-assurance, the young lady looked to be aiming for intimidating. And failing so badly it made John almost smile never mind the last twelve or so minutes of his life. Ace smirked and the bouncing intensified. “Saving the day. Leave ‘im alone you old Slytherin snake! “

Meeting John’s eyes, smile tight in warning, Ace tipped his head, a mute inquiry. To that John huffed. “I can save myself Ms. Meg. Your concern is noted but my distress, as it were, isn’t….”

“Alright, guys I swear I.. wait a second… did you just quote Hercules at me, like all in a geeky like spock way?”

He froze, he should have kept walking, shouldn’t have stopped. But he was rewinding his own words, and had it been any other day he’d be cursing Cam’ for making him see that show twice. Still this young woman’s name sake had been well written enough that Jill had wanted to see it and… and so he had.

And after today he’d not be irritated with Cam’, even in recollection of him being his brattiest, because there had been days. 

And today put every single one of them in a very different context.

And in counter point to that day, Meg was looking at him like it was Christmas day and he was holding a gift with her name over his head and she’d claw him down to get it. She would, she would…. She was humming, transcending mere bouncing to _vibrate at him_.

“Oh my god! Disney! _Old guy who knows Disney_! We need one of those! Well one more, Ace sorta knows the new ones- Hey, do you know the Lion King?! Can you do Scar!?”

Eyes wide, a different type of fear gripping his chest, John took a step back, incredulous, because _how was this his life_?

“ _I know_ that look!” Utter terror, dawning realization, all spelled opportunity to Meg Thomas. “You know! I know you know and…”

And… “What I know is irrelevant, right now, Ms. Thomas. I’ve obligations beyond your…” He left if hanging, waved a hand dismissively. “And I want to go check on Claudette, Quentin, then sleep.”

_Close your eyes and I’ll cut the lids off…_

If he ever slept again.

“But Claudette’s, she’s sick but Jeff says she’ll be fine.” Perhaps seeing the cold fury in his gaze she shrunk back, and Ace draped an arm over her shoulders, giving him a scolding look over the child’s head. A mute “ _she doesn’t know_ ”, and John grit his teeth, Cam’s screams spurring him to mercy. She spoke before he could, visibly deflating. “Look, she likes Lion King, and Ferngully but I don’t know Fern’ so… It might cheer her up.”

“Not tonight.” John dug in, then setting right hand over left, the shakes had subsided but better safe than sorry considering the blade. “I’ll let you know when I’m in the mood to consider…. Your proposal.” He’d ask the others about her interest in old movies, perhaps it’d be a mere talk about it, but he’d not consent to a reenactment, not without exuberant payment in turn. “ And yes, I _know Scar_.”

“Awesome.” She perked up, then skipped to the camp, pausing once to turn back and though he didn’t agree, said. “And thanks, Claudette will love it.”

Then she was gone.

“Hope you can sing.” Ace chuckled, his statement more ominous than the enthusiastic girl’s assumption by far. Then with a salute he sauntered back, leaving John to his thoughts, then the robed man, taking a deep breathe, quick stepped to catch up.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short piece.. because Meg is a force of nature when she wants something. And she clearly wants the lion king to get produced, Trails and Entity be hanged. Some candid talk about torture, Entity style, and some candid canon level gore discussed Left for Dead style. Enjoy this bit and thanks for reading.

She wheedled, she whined, she poked, and prodded, in trials and out. The mist coming had been a relief at first, because it guaranteed separation, save she’d snapped his arm and been dragged along for the trail for her insistence that “she’d keep him here, at camp, so they could work things out.” Because the thing that guided the mist hated him, her hand did not dissipate; she wasn’t even whisked to a different part of the trial. When they rematerialized John glared blearily down at her, and she took that as acceptance and snuggled closer, nails digging in, and she went back to whispering her points and arguments. The only concession to their situation had been to drop her voice to a whisper. She’d wanted a full reenactment, had done so at the bedside of many a survivor, and though Claudette was a good girl there were limits as for what John would do to ease her convalesce.

And even Cam would forgive him for pushing this thing back and snarling “absolutely not” at her first insistence he do the whole thing, free, and yes, he’d learned to his horror, he’d be reciting all the speaking lines and singing every song. 

Yet, despite being told no, Meg was not one to let anything go. And though she didn’t reattach herself she continued bantering as they crept around the facsimile of an auto yard . 

“Look, I don’t think you get it, what’s the point of… of doing something special for someone whose sick if they aren’t sick to appreciate it, like in full?”

Bending to test the ground, it was dried, flaky kind of earth, he scraped the ashy stuff off and looked about but the only height was a car pile. Well it was height, and with his present attachment he should probably play at “Looking for generators” though the sheer potential of some of these cars, particularly the more solid, detailed “classic” models, made him want to just start digging through trunks, lift hoods, and go through the various compartments for spare parts.

Pulling his hood up, the red wasn’t best but it blocked the silver of his hair from catching errant flashlights and the like, John picked a path across grass and broken cement, barely making a sound.

Or rather, what sounds he could have made were being over ridden by Meg’s… puzzling gait. She’d stretch, then bouncing after him kicking up a ruckus, then she’d stretched again, and poor innocent grass would rustle at her coming as she, yet again…

His glare kept her back a few paces, last bouncy attempt at stalking, and the realized pun in his head stilled the scathing retort on his tongue long enough for the girl to chirp.

“Warming up!”

Well didn’t that say everything about her survival methods? Flight and excess, he twiddled those ideas even as she tried to ply him for an impersonation, to see how much work she needed to do.

Curious how her thoughts and his were somewhat aligned, and he indulged her, more in an attempt to shut her up, before scaling up the first car on the mound, a wry. “I’m surrounded by idiots.” It would be the last thing he’d say to her, for his ascending flummoxed her. She dithered about, then seeing something, stiffened, and bolted with a yelped “Shit, Rabbit!”

It was a curious announcement. And she left her to running, content to let whatever she saw hear her and peruse, as for him it was all up from here, and with his attachment dispersed he’d be able to do that scavenging. The cars were precarious, rocking under his climb despite being crushed and wedged together like mismanaged Legos. At the top a whole, unruined car lay, his goal and first to be picked through. He slid from one blocky crushed car, to the other, slipping between a gap between the two a level up so the twisted metal would be between whatever was approaching per Meg’s gaze, then he ascended. The humming, feminine, that was the _only_ detail that kept him from panicking, from considering shrapnel in a life ending slant and taking the lot as a bloody boon. But it wasn’t, the Nightmare had, at least for him, never mimicked a woman. And that voice was a woman’s. So he stilled, while the tune drew near, and spared a glance down as… well Meg’s descriptor of _rabbit_ was… misleading.

Buff, muscular, clad in simplistic garb a hallmark of a time before his, blood splattered her shoulders like a ladies accessory, her hands glinted wet and redly in the chancy light… And she had something that caught the light in her hands as she swung it loose and close to her, and perversely… were those bunny ears about her head? They were too stiff to be cloth but he spied them, more in the woman’s shadow as she walked by than anything else.

He waited, counted to fifty, then when a generator clanged to life in the distance, he scrambled the rest of the way up, pulled open the unlocked car’s door, and on whim slide inside.

There were no keys to turn, but a tug got the hood in the back to pope open. Unlike a real car it would take time, do so in clunky stages. While that was handling itself he rummaged, pulling out odds and ends in a glove box, literally gloves, medial no less, those he pocketed, thoughts of adding them to the camps meager medical supplies guiding him. Deeper in, he reached his hand, and odd and ends nuts and bolts fell out, that and a small rain of… of salt packages… From a restaurant whose logo was so blurred he couldn’t even guess it’s colors, looking at them hurt so much. Well at least when he ate food it could be seasoned next time.

Pulling open the door as quietly as he could he swung his legs out and was careful to slide his feet under the car as much as he could, even as he stood. He used the edges of the vehicle and his toe tips to keep from falling, and inched his way around a perimeter that was… to put it mildly, very tight. The back wheel proved a bit precarious, and he took a leap of faith, bracing hands on the open edge of the trunk, and swinging himself over enough his robes billowed. Pushing down nausea, and vertigo, John straightened from his swung stoop, and looked down into… Well a mess that might have been human, if said human had been mashed into bits. It was near liquefied, with bits of white poking out, curiously there was no skull but considering… that might have made sense. John, per experience with carrion and the scents of dying, followed the route track of breathing through his mouth, out his nose, so not to catch the noisome scent… And curiously there was none. And in turn there was nothing save it. He looked about it, around, but the carrion took the whole of the trunk and there was nothing of value worth poking around the gooey morass of previous human being.

And he wasn’t going to check the body, even sacrificing the gloves to dig about, anything under or with that would be ruined beyond use.

Clicking the lot closed, he leaned against the vehicle for a moment to gather his thoughts. Because no matter if it was from someone failing his Game or another of life’s cruelties… there was always a jolt of startlement in finding something dead, a chill unpleasantness, and a reminder of fragility least he forget.

He traced a line, about his nose and mouth, the phantom tingle of an oxygen mask ghosting under his fingers. Then, after a cursory look about, he spied a gas station of some sort in the distance; John decided that it, rather than the generator mere yards away, held more promise and started his careful descent down.

XXX

There’d been coins in the register; a shake had gotten the metal inside to rattle, and while mildly disappointed he’d given the base a tug had gotten the lot to pop open. There’d been no lock picking or jerry rigging required. It was noisy, as were most things here, bell ringing at the end and what not, but a glance about showed no one around, and a straining his ears affirmed there was no humming. So he let the lot open and his anticipated disappointment was dashed when a glance inside showed, not the familiar slew of quarters, nickels and dimes, but rather gold coins. There were sporting holes cut out, the lot looked like it’d been purloined from the pockets of the rich from some ancient civilization, some sported symbols he did not recognize, one felt like it’s divots held meaning, some prehistoric brail, but his fingers couldn’t deuce their meaning. A fist full joined the metal odds and ends, he didn’t dare more, as his bags were plastic and felt thinned from the last time he accessed them. So he took what he dared and skipped door, sliding out a window rather than peruse the shelves for what goods were real and not boxlike protrusions from the wall shaped to look like boxed merchandise.

The humming, from a bit up and left decided that for him. As well as helped him pick is next span of the map to explore. Mainly, the one that wasn’t right here, right now.

XX

“So, yon rabbit girlie, she throws axes.” Bill huffed, watching over him as he staggered about, that span before the clearing span. His balance was at best, compromised, and he’d taken the axe to the back of the head after clearing the gate. The metal bars weren’t tight enough to prevent the projectile from hitting home. It’d been luck that he’d taken the flat, and the bizarre mechanics of this place that kept the lethal blow from finishing him off, or giving him a concussion.

Still the crippling nausea and dizziness were... unpleasant and familiar all at once.

“I haven’t felt this sick since my last Chemo.” John breathed, clutching at the side of a dark barked tree to stay upright, trying not to puke. Reminding himself he did not want to have to clean his boots after said spell, because it’d set him off again. He’d always been too sympathetic, so Jill’d tutted at him, holding his hair back as “sympathy nausea” had carried him off and triggered purging reaction after watching someone ese get sick.

Puffing on smoke, the old soldier considered John, and instead of offering the usual platitudes, took another draw. One breathe, another, smoke exhaled, a span burned between his fingers, embers licking callouses before he dropped the butt and ground it out under his boot.

“This place, it’s a real bitch an’ the more life sucked for you… It don’ get pain, the spider bitch, but it can grab your remembered pain and make you feel _that_ if it gets... pissy. You camped, went stuff gathering rather than Gen work. An’… I’m thinkin’ you did that more than once. Got the chicken and all. That’s a pattern. And Spider bitch notices those fast. So it let the Huntress get you when you were out, made that throw hit, grabbed your nearest pain, and threw that at you too. You acted out of line, you get punished…” With a roll of his shoulders, Bill huffed, leaned against his tree, and tapped on steel toed boot against it, it thunked hollowly at each hit. “She got me too, I was… at first I kept getting weapons, jerry rigging knives and anything with an edge. Near killed that electric using creep. Managed to get one of the kids out of a tight spot… and… and next Trial it had me, start right off strapped to a damned table no less, and bug eyes cooked me to death. Back to back, died and woke up there, to be cooked. But I’d never been shocked see, wasn’t stupid with forks and sockets like some of these bright bulbs back at camp and… I could sorta think what it might be like and that wasn’t _enough_ … So it made me remember getting eaten alive, and made me live that two trials in, back to back, being eaten alive, even if it looked like I was getting cooked to death instead.” 

“All because it doesn’t get pain, and that’s the pain I get, got, dead with if you catch my meaning.”

Horror made John’s eyes widen, then he shuddered, choked, and lost his battle with his stomach.

“Ah I forgot, Civ’, apologies. We don’ have much of those back from where I’m from, they got infected, see.”

Which did little to help with the hand hold nausea had taken on his throat, still experience availed him, and he was able to kick off his shoes before his meals, purloined and otherwise, came up in thick ropy chunks.

“When you’re a bit better, stomachs mellow and the like, Meg’s got her eyes on roping you into some kiddie sing along. She’s been chewin’ Jeff’s ear off, about a plumba or something… Looking for a trombone? Didn’t catch a lot of it, don’t plan too, really. So when you’re a bit better I’ll walk you into her clutches and leave you two to it.”

Groaning, head against his folded arm, the whole of him curled about a tree, the spinning was easing, and it was something, John dared to crack one eye open and better stare at the solider.

“And what do you get, for getting me in her clutches?”

Because John had gold, and salt, there might be some bargaining power there if he played his cards right.

“ _Not_ playing Mufasa.”

Well, to that John couldn’t think of a good counter offer, so he closed his eyes and waffled between feeling sick and being sick for a while.


End file.
